Journal Article

Nursery Crimes

Anastasaki, Elena

2019

Overview

Humperdinck (Humpty) Jehoshaphat Aloysius Stuyvesant van Dumpty, “businessman, philanthropist, large egg,” is found dead at the bottom of his wall. “Was he pushed? Suicide? Accident?” In Jasper Fforde’s The Big Over Easy (2005) Detective Inspector Jack Spratt, a nursery rhyme character himself, Head of the underfunded Nursery Crime Division, and Sergeant Mary Mary (the “quite contrary” one) are determined to crack the case. Fforde thus utilizes the idiosyncratic logic of wordplay which usually undermines coherent meaning by turning it into a solid determining factor both in characterization and in promoting plot. Wordplay is used to uncover the clichés of the Crime Fiction genre while submitting it to the constraints of the rhyme. In this article, I investigate the role of wordplay in the blending of genres of crime fiction and the fairy tale/nursery rhyme, focusing on the binding force akin to fate with which literary discourse is adorned in Fforde’s work, and the metafictional discussion this entails.

• Publisher: Brian Attebery, as Editor, for the International Association for the Fantastic in the Arts,The International Association for the Fantastic in the Arts,Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts
• Subject: Aesthetics / Authenticity / British & Irish literature / Childrens literature / Christie, Agatha (1890-1976) / Crime drama / Crime fiction / Criticism and interpretation / Death & dying / English literature / Exegesis & hermeneutics / Fairy tales / Fate / Fforde, Jasper / Fiction / Genre / Influence / Internet / Language / Linguistics / Literary canon / Literary characters / Literary criticism / Literary devices / Literary influences / Literature / Logic / Metafiction / Narrative techniques / Narratives / Narratology / Novelists / Novels / Nursery rhymes / Play on words / Plays on words / Plot (Narrative) / Readers / Rhyme / Websites / Word play