ALICE'S [SUCCESSFUL] ADVENTURES IN WONDERLAND: AN APPRECIATION OF ITS ONE HUNDRED FIFTY YEARS

• Published in: Mythlore 2015-10, Vol.34 (127), p.142
• Main Author: Christopher, Joe R
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: American literature; British & Irish literature; Carroll, Lewis (Charles Lutwidge Dodgson) (1832-1898); Children & youth; English literature; Girls; Lewis, C S (1898-1963); Tenniel, John (1820-1914)
• ISSN: 0146-9339

In the latter part of the ninth chapter, the Queen of Hearts, who has been quarrelsome at the croquet game and ordering people's heads be cut off, suddenly asks Alice if she has met the Mock Turtle-and takes her to the Gryphon, with instructions for it to take Alice to meet the Mock Turtle. Since the adventures are a dream, arbitrariness of content may be expected-unless one is a psychiatrist. A final technique for humor is the mis-use of logic. Since Carroll, toward the end of his career as Dodgson, became very much interested in syllogistic reasoning, it is not surprising to find this early emphasis on logic, even if here deliberately misapplied. [...]she pictured to herself how this same little sister of hers would, in the after-time, be a grown woman; and how she would keep, through all her riper years, the simple and loving heart of her childhood [...] Besides other editorial work, he has published essays on Lewis, Tolkien, Charles Williams, Dorothy L. Sayers, and some related authors, as well as such popular writers as Anthony Boucher, Ellery Queen, John Dickson Carr, Poul Anderson, Robert A. Heinlein, Isaac Asimov, and Gene Wolfe, and such standard authors as the Pearl Poet, Shakespeare, Coleridge, Hawthorne, Tennyson, and John Heath-Stubbs.