Limericks

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Limericks

• Edward Learandthe Limerick

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Edward Lear

• Born May 12, 1812 near London
• Died January 29, 1888 in San Remo (Italy)
• Youngest of 21 children
• Raised and educated at home by his oldest sister
  Ann
• Ann and Sarah, another sister read to him
  classical tales and modern poetry (the Romantic
  poets), and taught him to draw, especially
  natural subjects

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Rejection and Illness

• Edward's upbringing was entrusted to his sister
  Ann and Mrs. Lear had nothing more to do with it.
• Young Edward resented his mother's rejection, but
  found all the love he needed in Ann.
• He was first attacked by what he called 'the
  Demon', epilepsy, when he was five or six.
• A few years later 'the Morbids', sudden changes
  of mood with bouts of acute depression, began.
• Bronchitis
• Asthma
• Later life partial blindness
• When his eyesight began to fail, he focused on
  landscapes instead of detailed animals with his
  drawings

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Employment

• Began supporting himself at 15 by drawing
• At 10 worked at the London Zoo and published
  first work Illustrations of the Family of the
  Psittocidae.
• First book of colored drawings of parrots
  published in England
• At 20 started working for the 13th Earl of Derby
• Complete drawings of the Earls private menagerie
  (live animals for study or display) at Knowsley

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First Rhymes

• While working for the Earl of Derby he produced
  many of the rhymes contained in his first Book of
  Nonsense
• He wrote the zany verses and illustrated them for
  the children of the Earl

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Limerick

• There was an Old Man with a beard, Who said, 'It
  is just as I feared!Two Owls and a Hen,Four
  Larks and a Wren,Have all built their nests in
  my beard!'

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Limerick History

• Variants of the form of poetry referred to as
  Limerick poems can be traced back to the
  fourteenth century English history.
• Limericks were used in Nursery Rhymes and other
  poems for children.
• Limericks were short, relatively easy to compose
  and questionable in content they were often
  repeated by beggars or the working classes in the
  British pubs and taverns of the fifteenth,
  sixteenth and seventh centuries.
• The poets who created these limericks were
  therefore often drunkards!
• Limericks were also referred to as dirty.

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The Form

• Limericks consist of five anapestic lines.
• Lines 1, 2, and 5 have seven to ten syllables and
  rhyme with one another
• Lines 3 and 4 have five to seven syllables and
  also rhyme with each other

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Syllable Example

• There was an Old Derry down Derry, (9a)
• who loved to see little folks merry (9a)
• So he made them a book, (6b)
• and with laughter they shook (6b)
• at the fun of Derry down Derry. (9a)

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Anapestic

• A metrical foot composed of two short syllables
  followed by one long one, as in the word
  seventeen.
• A line of verse using this meter for example,
  Twas the night before Christmas, when all
  through the house (Clement Clarke Moore).
• An anapest (or anapaest) comprises two unstressed
  syllables and one stressed one for example,
  "unabridged," "intercede," "on the loose."

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Tips for Writing Limericks

• There is an easy way to remember the metre.
• Recite out loud the first line of the old
  Christmas classic, 'Twas the night be-fore
  Christ-mas and all through the house. In this
  line you can hear the compelling beat da da DUM.
  
• The rule is, you must stick to this metre in the
  composition of your limerick.
• Said an ape as he swung by his tail,To his
  off-spring both fe-male and male     "From your
  off-spring, my dears,     In a cou-ple of
  years,May e-volve a pro-fess-or at Yale.

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Tips for Writing Limericks

• If a limerick does not flow easily when read out
  loud, something is probably wrong.
• You will never get away with writing a limerick
  that does not rhyme.
• There is a tradition regarding the opening line
  of a classic limerick.
• The classic standard for a first line is to use
  it to identify a character, as in "There once was
  a fellow named Jake," or "A silly old man they
  called Ned"
• Another use of the opening line is to identify a
  location, as in "There once was a gal from New
  York."

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Tips for Writing Limericks

• a good limerick must be clever.
• The classic limericks starts with the
  introduction of a character, or identifies the
  location of an event or both within the first
  line, the next line might be used to identify a
  characteristic, an occupation, or some other
  feature of the character. The next two lines are
  a set up for the final line. A limerick is like a
  clever joke, holding the listeners' attention and
  then surprising them with the clever twist or
  turn in the punch line,
• The only good limericks are those that end with a
  bang.

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Sources

• http//www.schoollink.org/csd/pages/engl/limerick.
  html
• http//www.nonsenselit.org/Lear/learbio.html
• http//www.poetry-online.org/limericks.htm