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Lear's nonsense books were quite popular during his lifetime, but a rumour developed that "Edward Lear" was merely a pseudonym, and the books' true author was the man to whom Lear had dedicated the works, his patron the Earl of Derby. Promoters of this rumour offered as evidence that both men were named Edward, and that "Lear" is an anagram of "Earl". |
Lear's nonsense works are distinguished by a facility of verbal invention and a poet's delight in the sounds of words, both real and imaginary. A stuffed rhinoceros becomes a "diaphanous doorscraper". A "blue Boss-Woss" plunges into "a perpendicular, spicular, orbicular, quadrangular, circular depth of soft mud". His heroes are Quangle-Wangles, Pobbles, and Jumblies. One of his most famous verbal inventions, the phrase "runcible spoon", occurs in the closing lines of "The Owl and the Pussy-Cat" and is now found in many English dictionaries. |
Though known for his neologisms, Lear used a number of other devices in his works in order to defy reader expectations. For example, "Cold Are the Crabs" conforms to the sonnet tradition until its dramatically foreshortened last line. |
Today, limericks are invariably typeset as five lines. Lear's limericks, however, were published in a variety of formats; it appears that Lear wrote them in manuscript in as many lines as there was room for beneath the picture. For the first three editions, most are typeset as, respectively, two, five, and three lines. The cover of one edition bears an entire limerick typeset in two lines: |
In Lear's limericks, the first and last lines usually end with the same word rather than rhyming. For the most part they are truly nonsensical and devoid of any punch line or point. They are completely free of the bawdiness with which the verse form is now associated. A typical thematic element is the presence of a callous and critical "they". An example of a typical Lear limerick: |
Lear's self-description in verse, How Pleasant to know Mr. Lear, ends with this stanza, a reference to his own mortality: |
Five of Lear's limericks from the Book of Nonsense (in the 1946 Italian translation by Carlo Izzo) were set to music for choir a cappella by Goffredo Petrassi in 1952. |
Portrayals |
Edward Lear has been played in radio dramas by Andrew Sachs in The Need for Nonsense by Julia Blackburn (BBC Radio 4, 9 February 2009) and by Derek Jacobi in By the Coast of Coromandel by Lavinia Murray (BBC Radio 4, 21 December 2011). He was portrayed on television by Robert Lang in "Edward Lear: On the Edge of the Sand" a special episode of The Natural World, BBC2 14 April 1985. |
In popular culture |
Lear's written work was used extensively in the short-lived The Tomfoolery Show, a Saturday morning cartoon that was produced by Rankin-Bass and broadcast on NBC from 1970 to 1971. A Beach Full of Shells, the 20th album by musician Al Stewart pays tribute in the song "Mr. Lear", celebrating Foss and many events from Lear's life. |
Works |
Illustrations of the Family of Psittacidae, or Parrots (1832) |
Views in Rome and its Environs (1841) |
Gleanings from the Menagerie at Knowsley Hall (1846) |
The Book of Nonsense (1846) |
Illustrated Excursions in Italy (1846) |
Mount Timohorit, Albania (1848) |
Journal of a Landscape Painter in Greece and Albania (1851) |
The falls of the Kalama Albania (1851) |
Journal of a Landscape Painter in Southern Calabria (1852) |
Poems and Songs by Alfred Tennyson (1853, 1859, 1860) Twelve total musical settings published, each being for a Tennyson poem. |
History of the Seven Families of the Lake Pipplepopple (1865), illustrated manuscript now in the British Library |
Journal of a Landscape Painter in Corsica (1870) |
Nonsense Songs and Stories (1870, dated 1871) |
Tortoises, Terrapins, and Turtles (1872), introduction by J. E. Gray |
More Nonsense Pictures, Rhymes, Botany, etc. (1872) |
Laughable Lyrics (1877) |
Nonsense Alphabets |
Argos from Mycenae (1884), now in the collection of Trinity College, Cambridge |
Nonsense Botany (1888) |
Tennyson's Poems, illustrated by Lear (1889) |
Facsimile of a Nonsense Alphabet (1849, but not published until 1926) |
The Quangle-Wangle's Hat (1876) |
Edward Lear's Parrots by Brian Reade, Duckworth (1949), including 12 coloured plates from Lear's Psittacidae |
The Scroobious Pip, unfinished at his death, but completed by Ogden Nash and illustrated by Nancy Ekholm Burkert (1968) |
The Dong with a Luminous Nose, illustrated by Edward Gorey, Young Scott Books, NY (1969) |
"Edward Lear: The Corfu Years" (1988) ISBN 0-907978-25-8 |
Archival Collections |
The largest collection by far of Edward Lear original drawings resides in the Printing and Graphic Arts Collection at Houghton Library. Additional major Lear collections may be found at the Yale Center for British Art, the Liverpool Libraries, and Gennadius Library in Athens. |
Illustrations |
References |
Further reading |
Destani, Bejtullah & Robert Elsie (eds.) Edward Lear in Albania: Journals of a Landscape Painter in the Balkans (I. B. Tauris, 2008) ISBN 978-1-84511-602-6 |
Kelen, Emery. Mr. Nonsense: A Life of Edward Lear (Macdonald & Jane's, 1974) ISBN 978-0-35608-056-7 |
Lehmann, John. Edward Lear and His World (Thames & Hudson, 1977) ISBN 978-0-50013-061-2 |
Levi, Peter. Edward Lear. A Biography (Macmillan, 1995) ISBN 978-0-33358-804-8 |
Montgomery, Michael. Lear's Italy: In the Footsteps of Edward Lear (Cadogan Guides, 2005) ISBN 978-1-86011-219-5 |
Noakes, Vivien (ed.) Edward Lear: Selected Letters (Clarendon Press, 1988) ISBN 978-0-19818-601-4 |
Noakes, Vivien. Edward Lear: The Life of a Wanderer (Collins, 1968) |
Noakes, Vivien. Edward Lear 1812-1888 (Royal Academy of Arts, 1985) |
Peck, Robert McCracken. The Natural History of Edward Lear (David Godine, 2014) ISBN 978-1-56792-583-8 |
Richardson, Joanna. Edward Lear (Longmans/British Council, 1965) "Writers and their Work" |
Uglow, Jenny. Mr Lear: A Life of Art and Nonsense (Faber & Faber, 2017) ISBN 978-0-57126-954-9 |
External links |
Digital Humanities Resources |
Edward Lear and his 9,000 Drawings |
Edward Lear and his Studio Practice |
Edward Lear and Crete |
Edward Lear and Mount Athos |
Edward Lear in the Peleponnese |
Online editions and texts |
The Edward Lear Website |
Nonsense Books at Standard Ebooks |
Works by Edward Lear at Project Gutenberg |
Works by or about Edward Lear at the Internet Archive |
Works by Edward Lear at LibriVox (public domain audiobooks) |
An online compendium of the texts of Edward Lear's books of nonsense |
Android app of Edward Lear limericks Archived 21 October 2020 at the Wayback Machine |
Music set to Lear's poems The Jumblies and The Dong with the Luminous Nose (and more) |
A reading of Lear's Nonsense Songs, Stories, Botany, and Alphabets |
Works about Edward Lear in Calabria (South Italy) |
Doménikos Theotokópoulos (Greek: Δομήνικος Θεοτοκόπουλος, IPA: [ðoˈminikos θeotoˈkopulos]; 1 October 1541 – 7 April 1614), most widely known as El Greco (Spanish pronunciation: [el ˈgɾeko]; "The Greek"), was a Greek painter, sculptor and architect of the Spanish Renaissance. El Greco was a nickname, and the artist normally signed his paintings with his full birth name in Greek letters often adding the word Κρής (Krḗs), which means "Cretan" in Ancient Greek. |
El Greco was born in the Kingdom of Candia (modern Crete), which was at that time part of the Republic of Venice, Italy, and the center of Post-Byzantine art. He trained and became a master within that tradition before traveling at age 26 to Venice, as other Greek artists had done. In 1570, he moved to Rome, where he opened a workshop and executed a series of works. During his stay in Italy, El Greco enriched his style with elements of Mannerism and of the Venetian Renaissance taken from a number of great artists of the time, notably Tintoretto and Titian. In 1577, he moved to Toledo, Spain, where he lived and worked until his death. In Toledo, El Greco received several major commissions and produced his best-known paintings, such as View of Toledo and Opening of the Fifth Seal. |
El Greco's dramatic and expressionistic style was met with puzzlement by his contemporaries but found appreciation by the 20th century. El Greco is regarded as a precursor of both Expressionism and Cubism, while his personality and works were a source of inspiration for poets and writers such as Rainer Maria Rilke and Nikos Kazantzakis. El Greco has been characterized by modern scholars as an artist so individual that he belongs to no conventional school. He is best known for tortuously elongated figures and often fantastic or phantasmagorical pigmentation, marrying Byzantine traditions with those of Western painting. |
Life |
Early years and family |
Born in 1541, in either the village of Fodele or Candia (the Venetian name of Chandax, present day Heraklion) on Crete, El Greco was descended from a prosperous urban family, which had probably been driven out of Chania to Candia after an uprising against the Catholic Venetians between 1526 and 1528. El Greco's father, Geṓrgios Theotokópoulos (Γεώργιος Θεοτοκόπουλος; d. 1556), was a merchant and tax collector. Almost nothing is known about his mother or his first wife, except that they were also Greek. His second wife was a Spaniard. El Greco's older brother, Manoússos Theotokópoulos (1531–1604), was a wealthy merchant and spent the last years of his life (1603–1604) in El Greco's Toledo home. |
El Greco received his initial training as an icon painter of the Cretan school, a leading center of post-Byzantine art. In addition to painting, he probably studied the classics of ancient Greece, and perhaps the Latin classics also; he left a "working library" of 130 volumes at his death, including the Bible in Greek and an annotated Vasari book. Candia was a center for artistic activity where Eastern and Western cultures co-existed harmoniously, where around two hundred painters were active during the 16th century, and had organized a painters' guild, based on the Italian model. In 1563, at the age of twenty-two, El Greco was described in a document as a "master" ("maestro Domenigo"), meaning he was already a master of the guild and presumably operating his own workshop. Three years later, in June 1566, as a witness to a contract, he signed his name in Greek as μαΐστρος Μένεγος Θεοτοκόπουλος σγουράφος (maḯstros Ménegos Theotokópoulos sgouráfos; "Master Ménegos Theotokópoulos, painter"). |
Most scholars believe that the Theotokópoulos "family was almost certainly Greek Orthodox", although some Catholic sources still claim him from birth. Like many Orthodox emigrants to Catholic areas of Europe, some assert that he may have transferred to Catholicism after his arrival, and possibly practiced as a Catholic in Spain, where he described himself as a "devout Catholic" in his will. The extensive archival research conducted since the early 1960s by scholars, such as Nikolaos Panayotakis, Pandelis Prevelakis and Maria Constantoudaki, indicates strongly that El Greco's family and ancestors were Greek Orthodox. One of his uncles was an Orthodox priest, and his name is not mentioned in the Catholic archival baptismal records on Crete. Prevelakis goes even further, expressing his doubt that El Greco was ever a practicing Roman Catholic. |
Important for his early biography, El Greco, still in Crete, painted his Dormition of the Virgin near the end of his Cretan period, probably before 1567. Three other signed works of "Domḗnicos" are attributed to El Greco (Modena Triptych, St. Luke Painting the Virgin and Child, and The Adoration of the Magi). |
Italy |
It was natural for the young El Greco to pursue his career in Venice, Crete having been a possession of the Republic of Venice since 1211. Though the exact year is not clear, most scholars agree that El Greco went to Venice around 1567. Knowledge of El Greco's years in Italy is limited. He lived in Venice until 1570 and, according to a letter written by his much older friend, the greatest miniaturist of the age, Giulio Clovio, was a "disciple" of Titian, who was by then in his eighties but still vigorous. This may mean he worked in Titian's large studio, or not. Clovio characterized El Greco as "a rare talent in painting". |
In 1570, El Greco moved to Rome, where he executed a series of works strongly marked by his Venetian apprenticeship. It is unknown how long he remained in Rome, though he may have returned to Venice (c. 1575–76) before he left for Spain. In Rome, on the recommendation of Giulio Clovio, El Greco was received as a guest at the Palazzo Farnese, which Cardinal Alessandro Farnese had made a center of the artistic and intellectual life of the city. There he came into contact with the intellectual elite of the city, including the Roman scholar Fulvio Orsini, whose collection would later include seven paintings by the artist (View of Mt. Sinai and a portrait of Clovio are among them). |
Unlike other Cretan artists who had moved to Venice, El Greco substantially altered his style and sought to distinguish himself by inventing new and unusual interpretations of traditional religious subject matter. His works painted in Italy were influenced by the Venetian Renaissance style of the period, with agile, elongated figures reminiscent of Tintoretto and a chromatic framework that connects him to Titian. The Venetian painters also taught him to organize his multi-figured compositions in landscapes vibrant with atmospheric light. Clovio reports visiting El Greco on a summer's day while the artist was still in Rome. El Greco was sitting in a darkened room, because he found the darkness more conducive to thought than the light of the day, which disturbed his "inner light". As a result of his stay in Rome, his works were enriched with elements such as violent perspective vanishing points or strange attitudes struck by the figures with their repeated twisting and turning and tempestuous gestures; all elements of Mannerism. |
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