Latin and Greek Versions of "Jabberwocky" Exercises in Laughing and Grief

Abstract

Few English nonsense verses have been translated into as many foreign languages as Lewis Carroll's Jabberwocky, that whimsical poem from the first chapter of Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There. In 1964, Warren Weaver compiled a bibliography of translations of the Alice books in which he listed forty-two versions of Through the Looking-Glass, that is forty-two translations of Jabberwocky, in some sixteen languages (66-69). During the past twenty-three years many more translations have appeared (Guiliano 226-27). The large number of translations of the Alice books, however, is doubly surprising. Carroll's work, and Jabberwocky in particular, is very English in its language, both real and invented, in its figures