Clerihew: Difference between revisions
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Revision as of 15:04, 22 May 2006
A Clerihew (or clerihew) is a very specific kind of short humorous verse, typically with the following properties:
- It is biographical and usually whimsical, showing the subject from an unusual point of view; but it is hardly ever satirical, abusive or obscene
- It has four lines of irregular length (for comic effect)
- The first line consists solely (or almost solely) of a well-known person's name.
The form was invented by and is named after Edmund Clerihew Bentley; the first use of the word in print was in 1928.[1]
Examples
The first ever Clerihew:
- Sir Humphrey Davy
- Abominated gravy.
- He lived in the odium
- Of having discovered sodium.
- Edmund Clerihew Bentley
- Worked swiftly if not gently,
- Tracking murderers down by a hidden clew
- In whodunit and clerihew.
- Edmund Clerihew Bentley
- Mused, when he ought to have studied intently;
- It was this muse
- That inspired clerihews.
- Edmund Clerihew Bentley
- was evidently
- a man
- who could not get his verses to scan
- Carl Gustav Jung
- was very well hung,
- a fact which annoyed
- Sigmund Freud.
- Sir Karl Popper
- Perpetrated a whopper
- When he boasted to the world that he and he alone
- Had toppled Rudolf Carnap from his Vienna Circle throne.
- (by Armand T. Ringer)
- Sir Christopher Wren
- Said, "I am going to dine with some men.
- If anybody calls,
- Say I am designing St Paul's."
- John Stuart Mill,
- By a mighty effort of will,
- Overcame his natural bonhomie
- And wrote 'Principles of Political Economy'.
- Daniel Defoe
- Lived a long time ago
- He had nothing to do so
- He wrote Robinson Crusoe
- Johann Sebastian Bach
- was fond of saying, "Ach!"
- And instead of saying "Guten Morgen"
- He played the Toccata and Fugue on the organ!
- Alfred, Lord Tennyson
- Lived upon venison;
- Not cheap, I fear,
- Because venison's dear.
- (credited to Louis Untermeyer)
- George the Third
- Ought never to have occurred.
- One can only wonder
- At so grotesque a blunder.
- Paula Reginer
- Will have quite a career
- One can attest
- Via the size of her chest.
- (Credited to Paul D. Joachim)
- What I like about Clive
- Is that he is no longer alive.
- There is much to be said
- For being dead.
- Charles Anthony Richard Hoare
- His books are always such a bore.
- Especially the most recent of his,
- Communicating Sequential Processes.
- Google Reader's
- built with electrons and leptons, meters and liters.
- We're off dealing with those particles
- so we can bring you your articles.
- (maintenance page on http://www.google.com/reader/lens/)
Clerihews are occasionally not about a particular person, as in this example by Bentley:
- The Art of Biography
- Is different from Geography.
- Geography is about Maps,
- But Biography is about Chaps.
This is really a meta-Clerihew, as Clerihews are mini biographies.
- Ted Hughes
- Never wrote clerihews,
- It was his fate
- To become Poet Laureate.
Notes
- ^ Oxford English Dictionary