Lewis Carroll Parodies Anglo-Saxonism in 'Jabberwocky'
Poet involved
What happened
Lewis Carroll's poem 'Jabberwocky,' published in 'Through the Looking-Glass,' was a playful and brilliant parody of the Anglo-Saxonist poetic tradition. The poem, with its invented Anglo-Saxon-looking words ('brillig,' 'slithy,' 'toves'), satirized the scholarly obsession with ancient languages and the search for 'pure' English roots. It was a humorous but pointed commentary on the 'fossil' or 'root' debate in 19th-century linguistics and poetry.
Literary impact
Carroll's 'Jabberwocky' is one of the most famous nonsense poems in the English language, but it is also a sophisticated literary critique. By parodying the sounds and forms of Anglo-Saxon, Carroll was engaging with the very debates that Jones would later analyze in 'Fossil Poetry,' showing how contemporary poets were both inspired and amused by the fossil metaphor for language. The poem is a testament to the deep and playful engagement of Victorian writers with the linguistic theories of their time.
Source: Wikipedia
