Edward Lear's Feelings

A talk given at the Ashmolean Museum on Edward Lear’s life, art, and poetry. Edward Lear’s achievements – as a nonsense poet, scientific illustrator, and landscape painter – have often been studied in isolation from each other. This lecture explores the remarkable interconnections between them, and shows how he attempts to forge new conversations between paint and print, images and words.

'He weeps by the side of the ocean, He weeps on the top of the hill', the poet wrote of himself in 'How Pleasant to Know Mr Lear'. This programme considers when and why people cry in Lear's work, and considers how - or how far - tears offer catharsis.

Lear once spoke of 'this ludicrously whirligig life which one suffers from first and laughs at afterwards.' This programme studies the intertwining of the laughable and the lamentable in Lear's work, examining how serio-comic forms of expression explore mixed feelings.

This programme explores appetite, desire, and disgust in Lear. It studies a range of limericks alongside his diaries and letters, and considers how the author's disgust at his own mental and physical torments finds its way into his work.

This programme examines different meanings of 'wonder' in Lear - as both a positive and a negative emotion, and as something in between. It studies his paintings alongside his nonsense, and closes with a reading of his poem 'Some Incidents in the Life of My Uncle Arly'.

This programme introduces Lear and outlines the structure of the programmes. Each episode will take on a different emotion or affect - wonder, disgust, laughter, tears - and offer some approaches to Lear by looking at how his feelings become entwined with his words, his pictures, and his thoughts.