Jabberwocky Summary & Study Guide

This Study Guide consists of approximately 42 pages of chapter summaries, quotes, character analysis, themes, and more - everything you need to sharpen your knowledge of Jabberwocky.

Jabberwocky Summary & Study Guide

This Study Guide consists of approximately 42 pages of chapter summaries, quotes, character analysis, themes, and more - everything you need to sharpen your knowledge of Jabberwocky.
This section contains 2,767 words
(approx. 7 pages at 400 words per page)
Buy the Jabberwocky Study Guide

Lines 1-4:

Carroll explicitly defined certain words when the first stanza of this poem was published as a poem in its own right as "Stanza of Anglo-Saxon Poetry." He provided a glossary, or list of meanings, for some of the unfamiliar words; this list was later incorporated into Humpty Dumpty's explication in Alice in Wonderland. The first line begins with the now archaic English contraction for "It was" and contains the noun "brillig" which Carroll says comes from the broiling or grilling done in the early evening (br + ill + i[n]g) in preparation for dinner. "Toves" are supposedly badger-like creatures, and the adjective "slithy" is a portmanteau made up of "lithe" and "slimy." The definition offered for "gyre" in the second line is "to scratch"; "gimble" is defined as "to bore holes." Carroll has directed us to pronounce these both with a hard "g." However, in American...

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This section contains 2,767 words
(approx. 7 pages at 400 words per page)
Buy the Jabberwocky Study Guide
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Jabberwocky from Gale. ©2005-2006 Thomson Gale, a part of the Thomson Corporation. All rights reserved.