From a "comic strip" papyrus dating from Egypt's New Kingdom to the works of Stein, Joyce, and Barth, "nonsense" texts reveal a set of possibilities as rich and complex as the more conventional system of "making sense" from which they are derived. Examining palindromes, children's rhymes, puns, anagrams, code languages, and other texts, Susan Stewart explores the labyrinthine relationships between common sense and nonsense-- and presents an original contribution to the fields of folklore, literary theory, anthropology, and sociology by analyzing nonsense within an expansive context of the social manufacture of order and disorder.

About the Author

Susan A. Stewart is professor of English at Temple University. She is the author of On Longing: Narratives of the Miniature, the Gigantic, the Souvenir, the Collection.

Book Information
ISBN 9780801839818
Author Susan A. Stewart
Format Paperback
Page Count 240
Imprint Johns Hopkins University Press
Publisher Johns Hopkins University Press
Weight(grams) 340g