Lewis Carroll’s Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (Bloom's Modern Critical Interpretations)

256 Pages·2006·1.13 MB·English

by  Lewis Carroll

Bloom’s Modern Critical Interpretations
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Bloom’s Modern Critical Interpretations
Lewis Carroll’s
ALICE’S ADVENTURES
IN WONDERLAND
Edited and with an introduction by
Harold Bloom
Sterling Professor of the Humanities
Yale University
Bloom’s Modern Critical Interpretations: Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland
©2006 Infobase Publishing
Introduction © 2006 by Harold Bloom
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s adventures in wonderland / Harold Bloom, editor.
p. cm. — (Bloom’s modern critical interpretations)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-7910-8586-4
1. Carroll, Lewis, 1832-1898. Alice’s adventures in Wonderland. 2. Fantasy fiction,
English—History and criticism. 3. Children’s stories, English—History and criticism.
4. Alice (Fictitious character : Carroll) I. Bloom, Harold. II. Title: Alice’s adventures in
wonderland. III. Series.
PR4611.A73L49 2006
823’.8—dc22 2006015134
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Contributing Editor: Mei Chin
Cover designed by Keith Trego
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Contents
Editor’s Note vii
Introduction 1
Harold Bloom
A Note on Humpty Dumpty 13
J.B. Priestley
Escape into the Garden 19
Florence Becker Lennon
Alice in Wonderland: The Child as Swain 39
William Empson
The Balance of Brillig 69
Elizabeth Sewell
Through the Looking-glass 81
Alexander L. Taylor
From “The Character of Dodgson
as Revealed in the Writings of Carroll” 105
Phyllis Greenacre
Poetry 123
Richard Kelly
Love and Death in Carroll’s Alices 135
Donald Rackin
vi Contents
Toward a Definition of Alice’s Genre:
The Folktale and Fairy-Tale Connections 155
Nina Demurova
The Unreal Alice 171
Karoline Leach
Alice’s Identity 193
Hugh Haughton
Introducing Alice 205
Will Brooker
Afterthought 219
Harold Bloom
Chronology 221
Contributors 225
Bibliography 229
Acknowledgments 235
Index 237
Editor’s Note
My Introduction meditates upon Lewis Carroll’s enigmatic allegory, with its
implicit principle that Wonderland is the realm in which time has been slain.
The English novelist J.B. Priestley finds in Humpty Dumpty “the air
of a solemn literary man” or would-be literary critic, while Florence Becker
Lennon interprets Wonderland as Carroll’s refuge from academic and
clerical inanities.
William Empson, one of the best modern critics, shrewdly analyzes
Carroll’s Alice as the “swain” of pastoral tradition, after which Elizabeth
Sewell examines Nonsense as Carroll’s literary mode, in which there is no
emotion.
Carroll’s Looking Glass world is judged by Alexander L. Taylor to be a
new realm of morality, while Phyllis Greenacre delves into the mask of
Carroll to uncover hidden aspects of Dodgson’s personality.
Wonderland’s remarkable poetry is characterized by Richard Kelly as
parodistic sublimity, after which Donald Rackin quests for the dark linkage
between love and death in both chronicles of Alice.
Carroll’s genre evades every definition, though Nina Demurova
gallantly brings together Shakespearean dialogue and folk literature in an
illuminating way.
In an original venture, Karoline Leach suggests that Carroll (Dodgson)
never proposed to Alice Liddell, but actually was deeply attracted to the girl’s
mother. In any case, I agree with Hugh Haughton’s contention that that the
identity of Carroll’s Alice transcends any idea of order available in Dodgson’s
social world.
vii
viii Editor’s Note
In this volume’s final essay, Will Brooker emphasizes the elegiac aspect
of Carroll’s Alice, which certainly is a crucial element in the tonality of
Carroll’s art.
My Afterthought itself is a brief elegy for Carroll’s popularity, which
currently is fading among the children of the world, who pass from J.K.
Rowling to Stephen King, in our Age of Information and the Screens:
television, cinema, and computer.
HAROLD BLOOM
Introduction
I
“And yet what a dear little puppy it was!” said Alice, as she leant
against a buttercup to rest herself, and fanned herself with one of
the leaves. “I should have liked teaching it tricks very much, if—
if I’d only been the right size to do it! Oh dear! I’d nearly
forgotten that I’ve got to grow up again!”
Whatever the process is of renewing one’s experience of Alice’s Adventures in
Wonderland, Through the Looking-Glass, and The Hunting of the Snark, the
sensation is neither that of rereading nor of reading as though for the first
time. Lewis Carroll is Shakespearean to the degree that his writing has
become a kind of Scripture for us. Take, quite at random, the sublimely
outrageous chapter 6, “Pig and Pepper,” of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.
Alice enters a large, smoky kitchen and discovers an atmosphere permeated
with pepper, a sneezing duchess, and a howling and sneezing baby, as well as
a cook stirring a cauldron of soup, and a large, grinning Cheshire Cat.
Carroll’s prevalent phantasmagoria heightens (if that is possible) as the cook
commences to throw everything within her reach (fire-irons, saucepans,
dishes) at the Duchess and her howling imp, while the Duchess cries out,
“Chop off her head!” and sings a sort of lullaby to her baby, thoughtfully
shaking it (violently) at the end of each line:
1