Editing Jabberwocky (section)

==Linguistics and poetics==
[[File:Humpty Dumpty Tenniel.jpg|thumb|right|[[Humpty Dumpty#In Through the Looking-Glass|Humpty Dumpty]] who explains to Alice the definitions of some of the words in "Jabberwocky". Illustration by [[John Tenniel]], 1871]]
Though the poem contains many nonsensical words, English [[syntax]] and poetic forms are observed, such as the [[quatrain]] verses, the general [[ABAB rhyme scheme]] and the [[Iamb (foot)|iambic]] [[Meter (poetry)|meter]].<ref>Gross and McDowell (1996). ''Sound and form in modern poetry'', p. 15. The University of Michigan Press. {{ISBN|0-472-06517-3}}</ref> Linguist Peter Lucas believes the "nonsense" term is inaccurate. The poem relies on a distortion of sense rather than "non-sense", allowing the reader to infer meaning and therefore engage with narrative while lexical allusions swim under the surface of the poem.<ref Name="Lucas"/><ref>For a full linguistic and phonetic analysis of the poem see the article "Jabberwocky back to Old English: Nonsense, Anglo-Saxon and Oxford" by Lucas, Peter J. in ''Language History and Linguistic Modelling'', pp. 503–520. 1997. {{ISBN|3-11-014504-9}}</ref>

Marnie Parsons describes the work as a "[[semiotic]] catastrophe", arguing that the words create a discernible narrative within the structure of the poem, though the reader cannot know what they symbolise. She argues that Humpty Dumpty tries, after the recitation, to "ground" the unruly multiplicities of meaning with definitions, but cannot succeed as both the book and the poem are playgrounds for the "carnivalised aspect of language". Parsons suggests that this is mirrored in the [[Prosody (linguistics)|prosody]] of the poem: in the tussle between the [[tetrameter]] in the first three lines of each stanza and [[trimeter]] in the last lines, such that one undercuts the other and we are left off balance, like the poem's hero.<ref name="Parsons"/>

Carroll wrote many poem parodies such as "[[Twinkle, twinkle little bat]]", "[[You Are Old, Father William]]" and "[[How Doth the Little Crocodile]]?" Some have become generally better known than the originals on which they are based, and this is certainly the case with "Jabberwocky".<ref Name="Lucas"/> The poems' successes do not rely on any recognition of or association with the poems that they parody. Lucas suggests that the original poems provide a strong container but Carroll's works are famous precisely because of their random, surreal quality.<ref Name="Lucas"/> Carroll's grave playfulness has been compared with that of the poet [[Edward Lear]]; there are also parallels with the work of [[Gerard Manley Hopkins]] in the frequent use of soundplay, [[alliteration]], created-language and [[portmanteau]]. Both writers were Carroll's contemporaries.<ref name="Parsons">Parsons, Marnie (1994)  ''Touch monkeys: nonsense strategies for reading twentieth-century poetry'', pp. 67–73. University of Toronto Press. {{ISBN|0-8020-2983-3}}</ref>