Nonsense

I found this essay while I read researching nonsense in children's literature. I have copied the relative information and posted it below.
http://www3.sympatico.ca/ian.g.mason/Nonsense.htm

The Walrus -- February/March 2004
Stop Making Sense
The strange worlds of Theodor Geisel, a.k.a. Dr. Seuss, can transform the way we understand our ownby Ian Garrick Mason

"The word “nonsense” is a little misleading, for literary “nonsense” is not really nonsense at all. True non-sense is mere random noise -- a stream of data that contains no information or meaning, like the galactic radio static that SETI computers listen to in hopes of one day discerning an intelligent pattern. Even if we keep to the structured world of words, a real nonsense phrase, such as “climb dog artful to to”, would never appear in literature, as it would convey no meanings beyond those of each word on its own. We need yet another step back from full-scale nonsense:

So she went into the garden to cut a cabbage-leaf, to make an apple-pie; and at the same time a great she-bear, coming up the street, pops its head into the shop. “What! No soap?” So he died, and she very imprudently married the barber; and there were present the Picninnies, and the Joblillies, and the Garyalies, and the great Panjandrum himself, with the little round button at top, and they all fell to playing the game of catch as catch can, till the gun powder ran out at the heels of their boots.

Referred to as the Great Panjandrum, this odd little construction was reputedly written to test an eighteenth-century actor’s ability to memorize text at a glance, obviously made all the harder by the lack of “sense” it contains. Yet the passage still contains sentences with subjects and objects, with generally correct grammar and spelling. One can even visualize some of the different scenes in it. Where the sense evaporates is in the conjoining of actions that do not relate to each other, in the unreality of many of the actions themselves (she-bears don’t talk, nor do they inquire about soap supplies), and in names like “Joblillies”. The Great Panjandrum is a memory test, but little more: it contains no narrative interest, and very little humour. It is as far as literary nonsense can go.

In contrast with this, Carroll’s Jabberwocky begins to look eminently sensible. “’Twas brillig, and the slithy toves” sets a moody forest scene, and the rest of the poem follows a simple narrative thread from here. Despite his father’s warnings (“beware the Jubjub bird, and shun”), a brave boy waits in the forest for a jabberwock (“and as in uffish thought he stood”), and when the monster appears he rapidly dispatches it (“the vorpal blade went snicker-snack!”) and returns home victorious (“and with its head, he went galumphing back”), to be greeted by a joyful parent (“oh frabjous day!”), at which point the poem closes with a repetition of the first stanza (“twas brillig, and the slithy toves…”), reminding us that the dark forest goes on as before. The fact that almost every noun and adjective in the poem has been created from scratch does not impair the reader’s ability to understand the poem’s narrative and its specific moods."