Introduction: The life and works of Lewis Carroll:
Charles Dodgson, born in 1832 to Charles Dodgson (a clergyman) and Frances, in Daresbury, England, took the pen name, Lewis Carroll. Lewis has ten other siblings as well. “He told his brothers and sisters stories, made up games and wrote magazines with them,” (Woolf, Pg.1) says Edward Wakeling, having spent 12 years annotating Dodgson’s diaries. Lewis apparently loved to entertain children, and they loved him as well..
At eighteen, Lewis enrolled at Oxford in 1850, and became the equivalent of a fellow, at the university’s College of Christ Church. While it was deemed by the College that all senior students become ordained as priests and become celibate, Lewis managed to escape the ordination …show more content…
Once again, in Alice in Wonderland, there is the hint and allusion to physics and math at the beginning of the story. “She took down a jar from one of the shelves as she passed…she did not like to drop the jar, for fear of killing somebody” (Gardner, Pg.13). She was already falling due to gravity. She was scared that dropping the jar will kill somebody but it is not possible to drop something while falling already. This indicates that Alice is still young and does not understand the mechanisms of physics and math. She tries to understand her senses based upon logic without understanding the fundamental areas of math. That brings upon the question, how does one distinguish what is a “sense” without knowing what “nonsense” …show more content…
The poem is very translucent and yet quite opaque in its meaning. Where clarity in language is enough, the pronouns are not semantically and pragmatically linked, both within the poem, or, outside of it, and, hence the this clarity yields utter confusion. The reader might believe that he/ she might understand, but really he/ she can't! The poem above appears in the form of a letter that is read in a courtroom and, the identity of its writer and recipient are to be determined in the judicial process. This poem functions as the key evidence in the trial (of the Knave of Hearts). This is interesting because the job of the reader of the poem is apparently to match the identity of the perpetrator with that of the defendant. Alice declares that she doesn't "believe there's an atom of meaning in it," (Gardner, Pg.123) which is literally true - yet the poem functions as evidence. If nonsense makes sense, then, what exactly is sense, and what is nonsense? Lewis, the author was perhaps trying to fill in semantic prose (pros) and pragmatic (cons) into a parody of sheer disbelief. Perhaps Lewis was prompting the reader to believe that he was posing a challenge to the readers to determine if the story justified the prose written. The curious inflexion of circumstances and the unclear evidence produced in an evidentiary trial is made to win an argument. It lends credence to the
Charles Dodgson, born in 1832 to Charles Dodgson (a clergyman) and Frances, in Daresbury, England, took the pen name, Lewis Carroll. Lewis has ten other siblings as well. “He told his brothers and sisters stories, made up games and wrote magazines with them,” (Woolf, Pg.1) says Edward Wakeling, having spent 12 years annotating Dodgson’s diaries. Lewis apparently loved to entertain children, and they loved him as well..
At eighteen, Lewis enrolled at Oxford in 1850, and became the equivalent of a fellow, at the university’s College of Christ Church. While it was deemed by the College that all senior students become ordained as priests and become celibate, Lewis managed to escape the ordination …show more content…
Once again, in Alice in Wonderland, there is the hint and allusion to physics and math at the beginning of the story. “She took down a jar from one of the shelves as she passed…she did not like to drop the jar, for fear of killing somebody” (Gardner, Pg.13). She was already falling due to gravity. She was scared that dropping the jar will kill somebody but it is not possible to drop something while falling already. This indicates that Alice is still young and does not understand the mechanisms of physics and math. She tries to understand her senses based upon logic without understanding the fundamental areas of math. That brings upon the question, how does one distinguish what is a “sense” without knowing what “nonsense” …show more content…
The poem is very translucent and yet quite opaque in its meaning. Where clarity in language is enough, the pronouns are not semantically and pragmatically linked, both within the poem, or, outside of it, and, hence the this clarity yields utter confusion. The reader might believe that he/ she might understand, but really he/ she can't! The poem above appears in the form of a letter that is read in a courtroom and, the identity of its writer and recipient are to be determined in the judicial process. This poem functions as the key evidence in the trial (of the Knave of Hearts). This is interesting because the job of the reader of the poem is apparently to match the identity of the perpetrator with that of the defendant. Alice declares that she doesn't "believe there's an atom of meaning in it," (Gardner, Pg.123) which is literally true - yet the poem functions as evidence. If nonsense makes sense, then, what exactly is sense, and what is nonsense? Lewis, the author was perhaps trying to fill in semantic prose (pros) and pragmatic (cons) into a parody of sheer disbelief. Perhaps Lewis was prompting the reader to believe that he was posing a challenge to the readers to determine if the story justified the prose written. The curious inflexion of circumstances and the unclear evidence produced in an evidentiary trial is made to win an argument. It lends credence to the