Title: Precious nonsense
First published: 1998
Description: What is it about our experience of great literature that makes us treasure these works so highly? Stephen Booth suggests that a great source, perhaps the great source, of the special appeal of our most valued works is that they are, in one way or another, utterly nonsensical.

Reading the rhetorical tangles, the illogical leaps, and the most absurd imagery of three disparate texts - the Gettysburg Address, Ben Jonson's Epitaphs on his children, and Shakespeare's Twelfth Night - Booth demonstrates how poetics triumph over logic in the "mind games" that enrich the experience of reading.
Subjects: English Nonsense literature, English literature, History and criticism, Nonsense literature, English, Shakespeare, william, 1564-1616, twelfth night, Lincoln, abraham, 1809-1865, gettysburg address, Jonson, ben, 1573-1637, English literature, history and criticism, early modern, 1500-1700
People: Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865), Ben Jonson (1573?-1637), William Shakespeare (1564-1616)
Time periods: Early modern, 1500-1700
LC classification: PR428.N65 B66 1998