Carleton’s very own English department got its fifteen minutes of fame on April 13, 2016 when Jeopardy featured a question about the department mascot, known affectionately as “The Imp.” Placed at $400 under the category “Literary Miscellanies,” it read:
Anne Sexton & Karl Shapiro wrote for the Carleton Miscellany, symbolized by its imp who held this sooty job
Can you guess the “sooty job”?
Before we reveal the answer, let’s see what English majors (and Laird-dwellers in general) have to say about the Imp. In the name of research, we asked people to speculate over its origins — and, well, what precisely he(?) is. Here is what they had to say:
The only thing I can think of is that he was discovered in a forest of literature like he was conjured. He’s a sneaky pixie that drops literature into people’s minds.
I don’t know the history at all, but I’ve always wondered. Is he a bandit? He looks like one of those illustrations in children’s books written way back in the day — like The Phantom Tollbooth. I don’t understand what it has to do with Carleton English at all, and I kind of don’t like it. I wish I had a really cool pin with a mascot on it that I could put on stuff.
There was a student here who brought it – or, maybe a young prof – who worked on some sort of journal for which it was the mascot. It’s a chimney sweep-munchkin-elf who is a little devilish, a sort of trickster. I don’t know why they thought, “Aha! Our English majors are full of devilish tricksters! Let’s use it!” But that’s what I know.
I find him a little ominous — like he could be in one of those fairytales that you read when you’re little, but that aren’t really for kids because they’re really frightening, but you read them anyway. But for that same reason, he’s kind of comforting.
I’ve never really thought that much on it. People have told me about it and I don’t really remember any of it. Yeah, he’s kind of weird. He looks like he’s ready to whack somebody’s ass with that switch, if you know what I mean. It’s kind of an interesting thing, trying to figure out its origins. Notably black, and it seems to have a head piece and it’s like, what does that mean? It’s a little bizarre.
I honestly don’t have the wherewithal right now to make even a decent guess. The only thing I can think of is that it has something to do with kokopelli. That’s what it reminds me of.
So, where it comes from I have no idea, but I remember in freshman year seeing the pin and being like, “Oh, this is so harlequin!” and loving it and getting the plague mask idea from the face. And thinking this is my kind of English – I like revenge tragedy and the dark stuff and the old stuff and, you know, that’s why I’ve come to the English department.
I’m probably not qualified to tell you, since I’ve never taken an English class, but I know that it is somehow associated with English, and I read something about it somewhere. Maybe… Shakespeare? But I’m not able to tell you the answer since I’m not qualified to be on Jeopardy. As for what I think it is? A slug combined with a man with some feathers.
The guy who originated the Miscellany brought it from his previous paper, right? At Yale? I think that’s what it’s from. That’s my answer. I think it came from the paper the guy worked on before. I wanna say Yale. He’s a chimney sweep. But I read the thing, so it’s not really fair…
So what is the true story of the Imp? From the English department’s website: it was created by James Angleton and Reed Whittemore while they were undergraduates at Yale, and made its way to Carleton when Whittemore became a professor here. He subsequently established a literary magazine called The Carleton Miscellany — not this current blog, but its namesake, a magazine that ran from 1960 to 1980 — and used this figure as its icon.
When the Second Laird Miscellany brought the icon out of retirement in 1993, students nicknamed it “The Imp.” As the website notes, the icon depicts a chimney sweep and “represented Whittemore’s committment to sweeping away pretentiousness, pomposity, and cant, and all those things that threatened his vision of true style.”
Want to know more about the Imp? Read it for yourself!