Nursery Rhymes & Nonsense and Fantasy
Nursery rhymes are short rhyming stories that are designed for children. They usually have catchy rhymes and simple vocabulary. In most cases, nursery rhyme is a learning tool, as it helps children enrich their vocabulary or learn about the world and important events in it. The most striking fact about some of the the nursery rhymes is that their origins date back to the distant historical times. A lot of historical events are still portrayed in these stories and the lyrics have slightly changed.
In many cases these origins are not that innocently nice, as it as it may seem at first sight. “Mary, Mary, quite contrary” is a well-known nursery rhyme, which dates back to the reign of Queen Mary I of England, also known as Bloody Mary. “A fierce believer in Catholicism, her reign as queen—from 1553 to 1558—was marked by the execution of hundreds of Protestants. (Wood, 2015)”Although some of the rhymes have dark origins, their main purpose is to get children acquainted with historical events and build their vocabulary, which is very important in learning process. Nursery rhymes preserve a culture, providing something in common among family and their ancestors, and also between people, who do not know each other(Sizer, 2015). This tradition is appealing not only to kinds, but also to adults. However, nursery rhymes are greatly adored by kids due to their rhythm, rhymes, structure and their silliness.One of the main characteristics of nursery rhymes is a free play of imagination. Developing creative imagination is important and these stories enable to do it. In fact, free play of imagination creates the silliness and uniqueness that seem to be so amusing to children. In this regard, nursery rhymes have some common features with nonsense poems and limericks.Verbal wit and witty wordplay is common for all linguistic work producing nonsense and nursery rhyme is not an exception. Wordplay is present in almost any nursery rhyme: “Humpty Dumpty”, “Rub-a-dub-dub, Three men in a tub”. Besides being used in nursery rhymes, it is also used in nonsense poems, which is another common feature of these two literary genres.
The limerick form of poetry, which was popularized by Edwar Lear, has some common features with nursery rhymes and often refers to nonsense literature. “Limericks are short sometimes bawdy, humorous poems of consisting of five Anapaestic lines. (Limericks)” Limericks have aabba rhyme scheme and tend to be simple, humorous and sometimes even bawdy. ”The Dong with a Luminous Nose”, written by Edward Lear, is a prominent example of nonsense poems. The story is about a man who fell in love with a foreign woman. They had a great time together, but she had to sail away. After being deprived of his beloved, the man started his wonderings in a hope of finding his love, Jumbly Girl. (Lear, 1969).
Humor and pathos are entwined in this story. This pathos and sadness are portrayed in …
