Published in 1865, Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland offers us a story characterized by humour, fantasy and nonsense. Originally entitled Alice's Adventures Under Ground, it tells how the young Alice dreams she follows a White Rabbit down to a rabbit hole, and how she strolls in a fantastic world, Wonderland, inhabited by whimsical creatures. This world, which has been first created by Carroll to divert children, is often considered as a poetic one. But is Wonderland indeed a poetic world? The adjective "poetic" implies many notions: poetic language, creation, beauty, emotion. To what extent could we consider that both Lewis Carroll and Alice have created a poetic world? Are there limits to the poetic vision that the reader can have of Wonderland? In order to answer these questions, we will first study the poetic language of Wonderland; then we will explain how imagination and nonsense, which characterize the world, creates poetry. Finally, we will endeavour to stress the limits that can be found to the poetic vision of Wonderland. What characterize first Wonderland are its inhabitants; and those inhabitants reveal much of their personality through their conversations. Carroll manages to create both a poetic and innovative language.
[...] But the notion of a poetical world is also highly subjective, and the idealization of Wonderland can be considered as a limit to this poetic vision, as Wonderland appears as an unemotional world. Nevertheless, nonsense and poetry seem to be closely linked: as nonsense is characterized by verbal invention and plays upon the sounds of words, it is a perfect device to create a poetical world. It thus has been used in poetry, like the poem of the Victorian poet Edward Lear, Owl and the Pussy-cat”, published in 1871. [...]
[...] Wonderland is thus a poetical world insofar as it is characterized by a certain form of lyricism: Alice and Carroll, the poets, reveal themselves through this world. The process of creation of Wonderland is also comparable with the creation of poetry. A poetical world is a world which exists in the present moment-the moment during which the poet had imagined it-and in the long term-the poem as a written work which can be read by future generations. Wonderland partakes of this duality: it is both a fleeting world-because it exists only during the dream of Alice-and an eternal one-through the book written by Carroll. [...]
[...] How she longed [ ] to wander among those beds of bright flowers and those cool fountains!” The Oxford English Dictionary explains the adjective poetic as something characterized by quality of beauty”, and Wonderland is described by Carroll as a world aesthetically beautiful. The careful descriptions he makes of the marvellous creatures and places depict a poetical world with a poetical language. Wonderland is thus first characterized by language, and Carroll reveals himself as a poet, able to play with it. [...]
[...] It should rather be considered as a belief in another kind of poetry: he parodies the didactic and moralizing poem of Robert Southey are old Father Williams” to a more liberal poem, which advocates a life of pleasures and freedom in Chapter 5 “Advice from a Caterpillar”. This reveals that Carroll believed in a language full of fantasy, and in poetry of liberty, freed from rules and proprieties. He aimed at freeing his works from all moral or rules: his first goal was to enjoy children, and he knew he had to transgress codes to invent a language that could divert them. [...]
[...] But in Wonderland, the characters Alice meets are almost unemotional- the Duchess beats her baby and abandons him to Alice, “flinging the baby at her as she spoke”, in Chapter 6 and Pepper” and neither the Caterpillar in Chapter 5 “Advice from a Caterpillar”, nor the Cheshire Cat in Chapter 6 and Pepper” seem to be particularly concerned about the fate of Alice, and stay evasive in their advice. Alice meets a lot of different characters, she strolls from one to the other but eventually, none of those characters shows real emotion. [...]
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