Clerihews

Q. Just what is a clerihew

A. Perhaps the best way to explain would be to give an example:

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A user of the answerbank

Found that her mind went blank

Whenever she discussed

Why she was non-plussed

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What do you think

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Q. It's OK, if rather pointless. Anyway, just what makes that a clerihew as opposed to just any old bit of verse

A. Clerihews are always four-lines long with a rhyme scheme of AABB (as above) and meant to be humorous (as above ).

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Q. So how would you define the form

A. The Poet's Manual and Rhyming Dictionary defines it as 'a humorous pseudo-biographical quatrain, rhymed as two couplets, with line of uneven length more or less in the rhythm of prose'. Add to this, that the name of the subject usually ends the first or, less often, the second line, and that the humour of the clerihew is whimsical rather than satiric, and you have a complete definition.

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Q. Your example isn't quite right, then, is it

A. Well, OK the first line doesn't exactly conform to the rules but it does introduce a character. Think you can do better Have a go here

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Q. Where does the name come from

A. After the English writer and journalist Edmund Clerihew Bentley (1875-1956) who invented the form. Bentley first published these verses under the name E. Clerihew in Biography for Beginners (1905). The book was an instant success and soon widely imitated. More Biography (1929) was followed by Baseless Biography (1939), illustrated by Bentley's son, Nicolas. All Bentley's clerihews are collected in Clerihews Complete (1951).

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Q. Is this the same Bentley who wrote detective fiction

A. It is. His most famous work was Trent's Last Case (1913), which he wrote out of exasperation with the then current state of detective fiction. Despite the title, Trent's Last Case was the first of Bentley's novels featuring Philip Trent, a detective conceived as a deliberate contrast to Sherlock Holmes. Bentley was particularly exasperated with Sherlock Holmes, who he saw as simply a collection of eccentricities and thus part of a line of fictional detectives whose mannerisms were more important than their characters. It could be said that Agatha Christie's Hercule Poirot is another example.

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Trent, however, was intended to be more realistic, a man with more or less normal tastes, who was even allowed to be fallible. Bentley revived his character in Trent's Own Case (1936) and in Trent Intervenes (1938), a collection of short stories.

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Q. A contemporary of Agatha's, then

A. Indeed. Trent's Last Case was published seven years before Christie's seminal The Mysterious Affair at Styles, an enormously popular book which opened a new chapter in detective fiction. However, because Bentley was a far more accomplished writer, he was able to take the genre - like his contemporary and close friend G.K. Chesterton - down a literary path that Agatha couldn't hope to follow.

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Q. So it's a moot point as to who was the father (mother ) of modern British detective fiction

A. In terms of popularity, longevity and sales Agatha wins hands down, but Bentley's work combined literary credibility with a popularity which still endures.

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Q. And a few more clerihews

A.

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Edmund Clerihew Bentley

Created Philip Trent. He

Also defined the norm

For his eponymous poetic form.

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The art of Biography

Is different from Geography.

Geography is about maps,

But Biography is about chaps.

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The people of Spain think Cervantes

Equal to half-a-dozen Dantes;

An opinion resented most bitterly

By the people of Italy.

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The meaning of the poet Gay

Was always as clear as day,

While that of the poet Blake

Was often practically opaque.

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I doubt if King John

Was a sine qua non.

I could rather imagine it

Of any other Plantagenet.

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Dante Alighieri

Seldom troubled a dairy.

He wrote the Inferno

On a bottle of Pernod.

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See also the answerbank article on Agatha Christie

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For more on Phrases & Sayings click here

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By Simon Smith