Thoughts on Limericks: Book of Nonsense by Edward Lear

I've always had a soft spot for limericks and the type of poetry that they might represent. Edward Lear, being the irreverent poet he is, seems like a good place to start in the investigation of limericks and their meanings. Here are some limericks from Lear's The Book of Nonsense:

1. 
There was an Old Man with a beard,
Who said, "It is just as I feared!--
Two Owls and a Hen,
Four Larks and a Wren,
Have all built their nests in my beard!"

10. 
There was an Old Man in a tree,
Who was horribly bored by a Bee;
When they said, "Does it buzz?"
He replied, "Yes, it does!
"It's a regular brute of a Bee!"

12. 
There was a Young Lady whose chin,
Resembled the point of a pin:
So she had it made sharp,
And purchased a harp,
And played several tunes with her chin.

The Book of Nonsense by Edward Lear is Lear's derisive characterization of different people and personalities, but on quite a surface level assessment of said people. He seems to take fairly innocuous features of people, such as a man's beard or a woman's chin, and hyperbolize them into obscurity and, like he says, nonsense. The limerick form assists in this obscurity in that its job is to lead on two different narratives within the poem that come together in the last line. For instance, in poem 1, the story starts with the old man's beard in the first part of the rhyme scheme (aa). The poem then moves onto the second part of the story about the animals in the second rhyme scheme (bb). The poem then brings both narratives together in the final line, with the action of the animals and the reintroduction of the beard (a). This recipe repeats for poems 10 and 12, and appears to be a fairly regular pattern for at least Lear's limericks, if not the form of a limerick as a whole.

Essentially, limericks are a fairly simple, and even superficial, form of poetry in their rhyme scheme and topic matter. Limericks are an irreverent and fun form of poetry that can take ordinary things and turn them into an amusing story. However, even limericks have nuance in the fact that they can bring multiple narratives in only a 5 line poem.