Aspects of Alice: Lewis Carroll's Dream Child as Seen Through the Critics' Looking-glasses, 1865-1971

"What I tell you three times is true" is a correct statement only if what you are told is actually true.

That silly statement reflects the difficulty with any collection of essays on Lewis Carroll and the Alice books. Criticism is often a very useful thing -- but sometimes, especially when one is desperate to find a new idea to make one's way into print, the result is not worth the paper it's printed on. And that affects this book. Robert S. Phillips has gathered about three dozen articles and excerpts about the Alice books, from a wide variety of sources, broken up into categories such as biographical essays, literary criticism, and psychoanalysis.

It's sad to see that there is nothing of significance on logic, mathematics, or word games show more -- the keys to understanding the books, but admittedly easier for mathematicians than literary types. It's a major hole that detracts from this book very much. Some of the essays on other topics are very valuable -- it's nice to see the full version of T. B. Strong's description of his friend Dodgson (Carroll), for instance. But some of the rest -- well, the word "Ugh" springs to mind. Lanning's "Did Mark Twain Write Alice's Adventures in Wonderland" is ridiculous, and Leslie's "Lewis Carroll and the Oxford Movement" (which claims that Alice is about that attempt to bring Anglicanism closer to Roman Catholicism) is an absurd bore.

And then there is the section on "Freudian Interpretations." Eight articles on that. News flash, folks: Freud was wrong. Psychodynamic therapy is dying out, because it doesn't work. Dodgson was neurotic -- very much so -- but it wasn't because he was whatnot-retentive; it was because he had autism! So the eight Freudian articles are complete bunk. And monotonous, because they all say the same thing. Saying it eight times does not make it true; it makes it repetitive.

That doesn't mean the book is useless. This book manages to gather most of the really stupid interpretations of Alice -- i.e. the ones that have done incredible damage -- and stick them all in one place so readers can get a good overview of their complete pointlessness. For someone who wants to refute the idiocy, this is a very useful book. But if you want to actually learn something about Charles Dodgson, Alice Liddell, and Alice's Adventures, either cut the book in half at about page 275 and skip all the stuff after that -- or read a genuine study of Dodgson, such as Morton Cohen's biography. show less

Admittedly, I didn't read the whole book. I was mainly interested in Sir Shane Leslie's "Lewis Carroll and the Oxford Movement" (London Mercury 28, 233-39. RPT in Phillips). He (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shane_Leslie) sees many of relations between that religious struggle (which originated in Oxford in c. 1832) and the Alice books. Shane's article (p. 257-266) is highly speculative. But who am I to criticize that? My own guesses (www.snrk.de) about textual and pictorial allusions (to religious disputes, to Charles Darwin etc.) in Lewis Carroll's and Henry Holiday's "The Hunting of the Snark" are not much better.

Interestingly, Leslie wrote that Carroll's "Easter Greeting" (www.snrk.de/snarkhunt/#easter) was added to the 1876 edition of show more "Alice in Wonderland". In the notes (p. 493), the editor Robert Philips correctly points out that the "Easter Greeting" was added to "The Hunting of the Snark" (1876).

I also will read the other articles in teh book and hope to learn more about what has inspired Carroll's writings. show less

Great but this is my second purchase of this book & it's already falling apart!!