Publicação
Fantasy vs repression: representations of the child and the feminine in Lewis Carroll’s Alice Cycle
| Resumo: | The aim of this dissertation is to bring Lewis Carroll (1832 - 1898) to light as an important writer in the context of the development of Children’s Literature. The work researches both the specific background and the innovations that the author incorporated in his revolutionary Alice cycle: Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865) and Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There (1871), with regard both to the evolution of the concept of childhood and his representations of the feminine, which echo the beginning of a change in children’s and women’s role in society. Moving away from a crude realism, the tendency that characterized the early Victorian era, the author presents a fantastic style encompassing a language full of situational humour and word play, and a distinctive narrative episodic flow. In order to stimulate the child’s imagination, Carroll rewrites the more traditional forms of the fairy tale and the fable, namely through his unexpected introduction of challenging dialogues and allusive illustrations in his fantastic narratives. Additionally, he recurs to the dream element to suggest certain latent and underlying meanings that are present in most episodes and situations, intending to enhance an eventual crisis of identity in Alice and in the reader himself. The literary nonsense that characterizes the author’s writing thus allows two distinct levels of reading – the child’s and the adult’s. In the first, it is possible to see Carroll’s clear perception of the child as a sensitive being with a particular way of understanding the world. However, in the second, Carroll’s nonsense allows him to critically parody Victorian society and its strict values, without compromising his own social and professional position as a deacon and a mathematician at Oxford. Concerning the female figure in Alice, there is a prevalence of strong and independent representations; these are mostly severe and authoritarian characters who, when contextualized within the Victorian era, demonstrate a bold and critical subversion. Thus, questions of gender and the division between the public and domestic spheres are central aspects underlying his text, allowing Carroll to revisit female educational patterns, marital relationships and even notions of motherhood. These issues are closely connected with the central question of this study, which is the attempt to demonstrate Carroll’s unique form of representing fantasy and the fantastic: one that is initially intended to mirror freedom, as a value or practice opposed to repression, but which ultimately may also represent a form of repression. Carroll’s fantasy aims at representing a parallel world without rules, in order to confront the strict rules that exist in the real world, which signify repression. But, in the end, the reader concludes that a (mad) world without rules equally results in a repressing and unjust world, grounded in pure arbitrariness. The ways in which the author reinvented fantasy inspired modern children's literature and also other authors who demonstrated a particular interest in his style, such as James Joyce or Virginia Woolf. Likewise, he came to be a major influence in Surrealism and its artists, who indeed recognized him as their predecessor. |
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| Autores principais: | Machado, Hugo Filipe Rodrigues |
| Assunto: | Child(hood) Feminine Nonsense Fantasy Repression Infância Feminino Fantasia Repressão |
| Ano: | 2017 |
| País: | Portugal |
| Tipo de documento: | dissertação de mestrado |
| Tipo de acesso: | acesso aberto |
| Instituição associada: | Universidade do Minho |
| Idioma: | inglês |
| Origem: | RepositóriUM - Universidade do Minho |
| Resumo: | The aim of this dissertation is to bring Lewis Carroll (1832 - 1898) to light as an important writer in the context of the development of Children’s Literature. The work researches both the specific background and the innovations that the author incorporated in his revolutionary Alice cycle: Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865) and Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There (1871), with regard both to the evolution of the concept of childhood and his representations of the feminine, which echo the beginning of a change in children’s and women’s role in society. Moving away from a crude realism, the tendency that characterized the early Victorian era, the author presents a fantastic style encompassing a language full of situational humour and word play, and a distinctive narrative episodic flow. In order to stimulate the child’s imagination, Carroll rewrites the more traditional forms of the fairy tale and the fable, namely through his unexpected introduction of challenging dialogues and allusive illustrations in his fantastic narratives. Additionally, he recurs to the dream element to suggest certain latent and underlying meanings that are present in most episodes and situations, intending to enhance an eventual crisis of identity in Alice and in the reader himself. The literary nonsense that characterizes the author’s writing thus allows two distinct levels of reading – the child’s and the adult’s. In the first, it is possible to see Carroll’s clear perception of the child as a sensitive being with a particular way of understanding the world. However, in the second, Carroll’s nonsense allows him to critically parody Victorian society and its strict values, without compromising his own social and professional position as a deacon and a mathematician at Oxford. Concerning the female figure in Alice, there is a prevalence of strong and independent representations; these are mostly severe and authoritarian characters who, when contextualized within the Victorian era, demonstrate a bold and critical subversion. Thus, questions of gender and the division between the public and domestic spheres are central aspects underlying his text, allowing Carroll to revisit female educational patterns, marital relationships and even notions of motherhood. These issues are closely connected with the central question of this study, which is the attempt to demonstrate Carroll’s unique form of representing fantasy and the fantastic: one that is initially intended to mirror freedom, as a value or practice opposed to repression, but which ultimately may also represent a form of repression. Carroll’s fantasy aims at representing a parallel world without rules, in order to confront the strict rules that exist in the real world, which signify repression. But, in the end, the reader concludes that a (mad) world without rules equally results in a repressing and unjust world, grounded in pure arbitrariness. The ways in which the author reinvented fantasy inspired modern children's literature and also other authors who demonstrated a particular interest in his style, such as James Joyce or Virginia Woolf. Likewise, he came to be a major influence in Surrealism and its artists, who indeed recognized him as their predecessor. |
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