1In the beginning of Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking-Glass (1872), the chessman White King is writing a note in his memorandum book, but his pencil does not obey him. The poor King struggles with it but, despite his efforts, he is not able to write what he intends. The text that appears in his book is something entirely peculiar and contrary to his intention: “The White Knight is sliding down the poker. He balances badly1.” This episode reflects the manner in which language is often represented in Lewis Carroll’s nonsense works. Language seems to master the person who uses it, orally or in writing. It is language, not the speaker, that speaks—or, language speaks through the speaker2.

2In this episode, the real force that manipulates White King’s writing is Alice, who takes hold of the end of the King’s pencil unnoticed by him. The reason why Alice writes the words about the sliding Knight is not told but it foreshadows the later course of events, for in Chapter 8, Alice meets a riding White Knight who has a poor balance and who carries fire-irons on his horse’s back3.

3To manipulate someone’s writing by taking hold of the pencil is a radical and concrete way of determining writing. However, when we use language, we neither are completely free in our speaking or writing even if nobody were to rule our activity. To some extent, our writing and speaking is always restricted by the context—by communicative and social reasons, by literary conventions and stylistic limitations, etc. If we write metric poems in rhyme, the limits of our writing are even stricter. In Roman Jakobson’s often-cited words, “the poetic function projects the principle of equivalence from the axis of selection into the axis of combination4”. The requirements of prosody and a certain rhyme scheme restrict the potential choice of words and syntactical structures.

4In Lewis Carroll’s nonsense works, this determinative aspect of the use of language is dealt with in many ways, both at a metalinguistic level and by implication. In many cases, the influence of style and language is even so overpowering that it evokes not only an impression of restricting the use of language, but also an effect of generating, creating, speech and events.

5In nonsense studies, linguistic and textual5 determination is frequently mentioned and it also is often stated that in nonsense literature, language and its formal requirements generate speaking and events6. However, despite the common awareness of that phenomenon, the principles and ways of the generative effect have not been explicated. In nonsense research we can find very precisely pointed examples of the generative effect but not the general principles behind our intuitive interpretations and impressions. Why do we in certain cases think that the formal rules and principles, for instance the model of a sonnet, restrict the verbal representation but in other cases, especially in nonsense literature, we interpret the same determinative rules and principles as a manner of generating speech and the chain of events?

6In this article, I shall discuss the different ways in which language generates speech and events in Lewis Carroll’s nonsense books. His nonsense gives an adequate frame for studying linguistic and textual generation, for in his works the formal principles are mostly transparent and the broader Carrollian context gives a fertile ground for the feature. It is combined with other “languages”, the languages of dream and different kinds of games and their requirements.

7Furthermore, the linguistic generation interlocks interestingly with the topos of childhood in Carroll’s Alice books. Linguistic generation is consonant with Carroll’s world that is full of different kinds of rules from the rules and hierarchy of chess and card games to linguistic rules. Moreover, linguistic generation, as a predominantly metalinguistic feature, corresponds to children’s linguistic development. It points out different kinds of linguistic rules and shows them from a child’s perspective. On the one hand, Alice encounters characters, in relation to whom she is like a child in the dogmatic and perplexing adult world, and on the other hand, the characters she meets behave like self-centred, stubborn children in pursuance of their enthusiasm for childish word playing. Like nursery rhymes, Carroll’s extremist linguistic writing provides a rehearsal ground for developing one’s linguistic skills: familiarity with syntactical rules, awareness of lexical and syntactical ambiguity, ear for phonetic patterning, eye for orthography, etc. Saying this, I do not mean that Carroll’s books were primarily didactic textbooks, but that, as Jean-Jacques Lecercle has pointed out, they deal with—mainly in a mocking way—the same kind of questions that children encounter in school7.

8At first, I shall present the restricting and thereafter the generating aspect of the same linguistic-textual determining. That is, I introduce at first the determining linguistic and textual rules and principles present in Carroll’s nonsense and thereafter I discuss how these determining techniques evoke an impression of generation.

The techniques of linguistic and textual determination

9The determinative linguistic and textual techniques in nonsense literature encompass a wide range of basic devices that are common to all kinds of literature. These rules and principles are recurrently mentioned in nonsense studies and they have been analysed in detail in research literature8. Therefore, it is sufficient here to give an overall picture of the main techniques. I have roughly divided them into three broad groups.

10To the first group belong different kinds of phonetic rules and principles such as metre, rhyme, alliteration, paronomasia and spoonerism. Phonetic parallelism restrict wording, for example, in Tweedledee’s poem “The Walrus and the Carpenter” in Through the Looking-Glass. It follows iambic tetrameter and trimeter and has a certain rhyme-pattern; besides many of the lines are alliterative:

“The time has come,” the Walrus said,
“To talk of many things:
Of shoes—and ships—and sealing-wax—
Of cabbages—and kings—
And why the sea is boiling hot—
And whether pigs have wings9”

11There is nothing nonsensical in this kind of phonetic parallelism as such. The context and the lack of semantic cohesion together with the way of using the sound patterning make it nonsensical.

12The second group of the determining techniques consists of different kinds of verbal associations that are based on the similarity of the form or the meaning of two or more words10, for instance on etymology (real or poetic etymology) of words, paronomasia, homonymy, homophony and a certain kind of ambiguity that is based on the literal meanings of idiomatic expressions. These kinds of verbal associations lead the course of conversation or events in many episodes in Carroll’s works. Associations can, for instance, lead from a “tale” to a “tail”, “(mustard-)mine” to the pronoun “mine”, from an “axis” to “axes”, from “feathering” (rowing) to “feather” (plumage), from a “butterfly” to the “Bread-and-butter-fly”, and from a “union” to an “onion”, etc.11.

13In Carroll’s nonsense literature, also, different kinds of intertextual influences affect the story. It is obvious that Carroll’s parodies must to some extent conform structurally and semantically to the parodied poems and thus they are restricted by the original texts, but in Carroll’s nonsense, intertexts can also master characters’ actions. Intertexts master the chain of events for instance in the episode in which Tweedledum and Tweedledee are forced to battle because of a nursery rhyme:

Tweedledum and Tweedledee
Agreed to have a battle;
For Tweedledum said Tweedledee
Had spoiled his nice new rattle12.

14Another “old song”, in its turn, affects the Lion and the Unicorn’s behaviour and the storyline. According to the song, that comes to Alice’s mind, “The Lion and the Unicorn were fighting for the crown: / The Lion beat the Unicorn all round the town. / Some gave them white bread, some gave them brown; / Some gave them plum-cake and drummed them out of town13.” Thus, the Lion and the Unicorn really have to fight for the White King’s crown and, as Alice correctly presumes, the King offers some white and brown bread to the fighters, and later a plum cake.

15These catching nursery rhymes actually have a two-phase influence on the story. At first, they invite or even force Alice to repeat them (“she could hardly help saying them out loud”), and thereafter they determine the course of later events14.

From restricting to generating

16It is evident that the above-mentioned determining techniques can influence the text’s progression. For instance, in “The Walrus and the Carpenter” the requirements of prosody understandably restrict the potential lexical and syntactical possibilities of the progression of the text. How about the generating of speech and events? Why do we get the impression of generation in certain nonsensical episodes but not in other ones? In the following proposal, I argue for five factors that emphasize the generative side of the linguistic and textual determination:

1. Clearness and restrictiveness of the determining rules and principles;
2. Exiguity or obscurity of other kinds of motivation for the progression of the represented speech and events;
3. Metalinguistic and metapoetic elements;
4. Elements that emphasize the speaking process;
5. Significance of the generated speech or event.

17These five factors are not fundamental for creating a generative effect but they explicate the principles that affect our interpretations.

18The clearness of the rules and principles is a matter-of-course requirement —we have to identify the rules and principles before we can talk about their influence. By the restrictiveness of the rules and principles I refer to how broad elbowroom they give for the progression of the text. For instance, the requirements of blank verse give plenty of room for an English poet, whereas other models are much more restrictive, such as the requirements of metre, rhyme and the initial of a line in Carroll’s acrostic in Through the Looking-Glass15. The clearness and the restrictiveness of the determining models represent the formal requirements of the model whereas the second factor represents the semantic side of the same process. As generative factors, these two facets belong together. If the connection between the sentences, words or events is weakly or obscurely motivated as regards to their meaning, we are more inclined to pay attention to the formal determination.

19The more explicit and restrictive is the formal model and the less are the sentences motivated in terms of their meaning, the stronger is the impression of linguistic and textual generation. For example, in Carroll’s works, many catalogues seem to be totally arbitrary but if we take a look in the formal logic of the catalogues, the text’s progression seems to be more motivated. As an example of the tension between these two facets we can think the poem “The Walrus and the Carpenter”. In the above-cited stanza, there is a catalogue of things to be talked of: shoes, ships, sealing-wax, cabbages and kings, and “why the sea is boiling hot” and “whether pigs have wings”. These components of the catalogue appear to be entirely arbitrary; it is hard to find any metaphoric or metonymic connection between the enumerated things. However, the catalogue seems to be motivated at a formal level, by the above-mentioned rules of alliteration, rhyme scheme and iambic meter. This tension between the restrictive formal model and the arbitrary content produces, in part, an impression of linguistic generation. It is the language that has decided which things are mentioned in the catalogue16.

20The third factor that affects the impression of linguistic and textual generation consists of different kinds of metalinguistic and metapoetic elements, i.e. the explicit stating of the rules and principles that restrict speech and text production. They make the rules evident and emphasize their importance. At the Mad Tea Party, the Dormouse tells a story about three sisters, Elsie, Lacie and Tillie, who lived in a treacle and “drew all manner of things—everything that begins with an M—[...], such as mouse-traps, and the moon, and memory, and muchness17”. In this episode all the three aforesaid factors are present. The requirement of the initial letter M is a clear and a rather narrow linguistic rule (Factor 1) but the primary reason why the Dormouse’s catalogue appears to be generated by the rule is in the last two things, memory and muchness. They follow the principle of the initial M but do not fit the context (Factor 2). The metalinguistic stating of the principles (Factor 3) makes the generative effect even more evident. Besides, the arbitrariness of the principle is emphasized as Alice questions the source for the selected rule and the March Hare answers: “Why not18?”

21Linguistic generation often influences the characters’ conversation. That kind of generating of speech can be foregrounded by different kinds of elements that emphasize the speaking process (Factor 4). It can be accentuated, for example, by the indication of hesitation, groping for words and thinking during the discourse, and by intentional or unintentional misapprehensions in the characters’ dialogues. Discourse is foregrounded for instance in the episode, in which Alice meets the Anglo-Saxon Messenger in the Looking-Glass World. When Alice hears the Messenger’s name Haigha she cannot help but begin a game: “I love my love with an H [...] because he is Happy. I hate him with an H, because he is Hideous. I fed him with—with—with Ham-sandwiches and Hay19.”

22Taking Haigha’s name as a starting point, she begins a Victorian parlour game20 that follows the phonetic principle of the initial letter H. What emphasizes the determination of this principle is Alice’s hesitation “with—with—with” that indicates the cognitive challenge the game supports. The generative function of this game continues, for later on it turns out that the Messenger really has a sandwich and hay in his bag21.

23Misapprehension is a feature that appears in almost every conversation that Alice has in Wonderland and in the Looking-Glass World. Recurrently, she finds herself in a situation in which other characters take her literally, interpret her words as puns or quibble over her wording. This creates a generative effect because other characters seem to be more interested in the linguistic possibilities than in Alice’s meaning. Ambiguous language takes precedence over the speakers’ intention. For instance, when Alice asks a frog “Where’s the servant whose business it is to answer the door?” she, as an answer, gets a perplexed question from the frog: “To answer the door? What’s it been asking of22?” In other words, the verb “to answer” and its ambiguity begin to lead the conversation.

24In addition, what emphasizes the generating effect is the significance of the generated speech or event, i.e., the consequences of the generating process (Factor 5). It does not create the generating effect but it points out its significance, especially from the characters’ point of view. One of the best examples of the dramatic consequences of linguistic generation is the episode in Wonderland in which one word and its phonetic associations almost have deadly serious consequences. In a conversation with the Duchess, Alice has an opportunity to demonstrate a little of her geographic knowledge: “You see the earth takes twenty- four hours to turn round on its axis—” but the Duchess interrupts her: “Talking of axes, chop off her head23!” In spelling, the difference between “axis” and “axes” is minimal but at a semantic level the transition from an axis to an axe is dramatic and surely significant.

25The above-mentioned five angles that, for their part, evoke or emphasize the generating effect are very broad and they can be generalised to other canonical nonsense literature, such as Edward Lear’s limericks and Christian Morgenstern’s “gallows songs”. In order to focus the question of the linguistic and textual generating from a general level to Carroll’s nonsense works, we have to look more carefully at the context in which the generative effect arises.

26The idea of linguistic-textual generation naturally fits Carroll’s nonsense books, in which different kinds of metalinguistic topics are constantly dealt with. In a context in which the relation between language and the world is peculiar in many ways, it is no wonder if the language occasionally masters speaking or the story. Words are treated, for instance, as concrete living creatures—not merely as symbols that represent living things. Linguistic generation is thus only one area among others in which the relation between language and the represented things and events is topsy-turvy.

27Moreover, what makes the idea of linguistic and textual generating natural in Carroll’s works is the fact that, especially in the Alice books, the restrictive linguistic and textual rules and principles go together with other rules, such as the rules of chess, card games, croquet and Caucus-race, the rules of social (or asocial) behaviour, and the logic of dreams. If we take several determining rules and principles into account when we read Carroll’s Alice books, many events and things appear more motivated.

28The White Knight is a good example of a character who is the victim of many different overlapping rules. As a chessman he has to follow certain rules when he tries to proceed on the chessboard. What makes his journey even more complicated is his poor balance on horseback that can be interpreted as a result of Alice’s sentence “The White Knight is sliding down the poker. He balances badly” at the beginning of the book. In Alice’s dream the sentence has pushed the dream character off balance. From the angle of chess-playing, the Knight’s poor balance also illustrates the knight’s move on a chessboard, which is two squares in one direction followed by one square to the right or left—like the Knight’s fall on one or the other side of his horse24. In addition to his problems with balance, the Knight has to carry several things on his horse’s back—a beehive, a mousetrap, fire-irons, etc.—this presumably arising from the corresponding motifs in the previous stages of Alice’s dream25. That kind of linguistic generation is understandable, for in dreams, as Sigmund Freud, among others, has pointed out, the verbal associations often determine the course of the dream.

29In the playful context of the Alice books, the linguistic-textual generation can be paralleled with children’s play. What is common to this kind of play is that it, in Roger Caillois’s terms, combines both poles of the continuum between two opposite ways of playing, ludus and paidia. First of all, linguistic generation is based on certain formal rules and principles and hence it resembles Caillois’s ludus, rule-governed playing. However, at a semantic level, the rules enable an opposite tendency, paidia, i.e. carefree gaiety, uncontrolled fantasy26.

30In Caillois’s four major categories of play (agôn, alea, mimicry, ilinx), based on, respectively, competition, chance, simulation and vertigo, linguistic-textual generation resembles the alea and the ilinx-type of play. The rules and principles of linguistic-textual generation provide a kind of random element that produces something confusing, mentally dizzying27. For instance, the formal requirements in “The Walrus and the Carpenter” haphazardly produces a list of things that do not belong together. This double character of linguistic and textual generation can be seen as a result of the general tendency of Nonsense literature to follow formal requirements in favour of semantic coherence or narrative consistency, besides it corresponds to children’s playing with different kind of rules.

Rem tene or verba tene?

31At the beginning of the article, I referred to the episode in which Alice manipulates the White King’s writing unnoticed by the King. “My dear! I really must get a thinner pencil. I can’t manage this one a bit: it writes all manner of things that I don’t intend—,” he pants out28. His complaining illustrates well one metalinguistic topic that constantly comes up in both Carroll’s Alice books, the tension between speaker’s or writer’s intention and the representation of it. In the Alice books, this tension is often manifested as a dichotomy between thinking and speaking or between sense and sound.

32The latter pole, speaking or sound, is the more powerful one in linguistic generation; language speaks through the speaker or speaking is determined by sounds. In Carroll’s collection of poetry Rhyme? and Reason? (1883), the relationship between sound and sense is a motif that occurs not only in the book’s metapoetic title but also in its many poems. Things are done “just for punning’s sake” (“Phantasmagoria”) and people speak “neglecting Sound and Sense,/ And careless of all consequence” (“The Three Voices”)29. In Carroll’s Alice books, sound’s precedence over sense is concerned for instance in the court scene in which the King of Hearts comments on Alice’s evidence, that she knows “nothing whatever” about the lawsuit:

“That’s very important,” the King said, turning to the jury. They were just beginning to write this down on their slates, when the White Rabbit interrupted: “Unimportant, your Majesty means, of course,” he said in a very respectful tone, but frowning and making faces at him as he spoke.
“Unimportant, of course, I meant,” the King hastily said, and went on to himself in an undertone, “important—unimportant—unimportant—important—” as if he were trying which word sounded best30.

33To his mind the words’ phonetic sound has priority over their meaning31. Considering that these words are stated at court, this purely aesthetic preference is rather peculiar.

34However, ideas that are contrary to the idea of the dominating language are frequently dealt with, when the opposite pole, thinking or sense, is emphasized. Alice for instance continually hears that one has to think before speaking. The Red Queen advises Alice: “think before you speak—and write it down afterwards32”, and when Alice at the Mad Tea Party makes the mistake of using the phrase “I don’t think...,” the Hatter abruptly continues: “then you shouldn’t talk33”.

35The significance of sense compared to sound in turn is dealt with in the conversation between Alice and the Duchess in Wonderland. The Duchess has a talent of coming up with morals, and one of her morals is “Take care of the sense, and the sounds will take care of themselves34” that echoes Marcus Porcius Cato’s often-cited sentence Rem tene, verba sequentur (“Keep to the subject, the words will follow”)35. Nevertheless, although her moral forbids yielding to the powers of phonetic determining, it simultaneously uses a generative technique of phonetic association, i.e. it puns with the English proverb “Take care of the pence and the pounds will take care of themselves36”.

36What is typical of Lewis Carroll’s metalinguistic elements, is that he plays with different linguistic ideas by leading them to extremity. If the idea of the power of words over the speaker or writer appears nonsensical, the opposite idea is showed to be nonsensical as well. In the Alice books, the great, childlike linguist Humpty Dumpty represents the opposite view in which the words obey the speaker’s intended meaning (verba sequentur)—by fair means or foul. He admits that words can be moody at times, thus having generative potential, but, by carrot and stick, he can bring them into line:

The question is [...], which is to be master—that’s all. [...] They’ve a temper, some of them—particularly verbs: they’re the proudest—adjectives you can do anything with, but not verbs—however, I can manage the whole lot of them! Impenetrability! That’s what I say37!