Lewis Carroll was the pen name of The Reverend Charles Lutwidge Dodgson.
Dodgson was born in Daresbury, England in 1832 and spent the major part of his adult life as an Oxford Mathematics tutor. He also found time for many other activities, including Photography, and of course the writing of the world famous Alice in Wonderland book, as well as other comic prose and verse. Dodgson died in Guildford, England in 1898.
Jabberwocky
The poem Jabberwocky appeared in Lewis Carroll’s other Alice book “Through the Looking Glass”.
Many people consider it to be the finest nonsense verse in the English language, and several
of the words in the poem that were invented by Lewis Carroll – such as “chortled” and “galumphing” - have entered the English language.
Listen to Bill Moulford reading Jabberwocky
You can purchase the complete CD or Download here.
About Alice
One example of Lewis Carroll’s genuis is his creation of the character of Alice. Alice is a complete original in literary fiction. Carroll’s achievement is that, although Alice is only 7 years old in Alice’s Adventures and still only 71/2 years in Through The Looking Glass she is someone we can identify with.
Alice can be funny, fascinating, amusing and admirable all at the same time. We feel her helplessness when she repeatedly fails to get into the garden because she is either too large to get through the door or too small to reach the key that would unlock the door. We empathise with her sense of frustration when she is confronted by the seemingly unhelpful Caterpillar. Her surreal conversations with herself make us laugh because they are the stuff of standup comedy. But she earns our respect for her humanitarian concern for the safety of the Duchess's baby and, later in the book, the fate of those cards ordered to be beheaded by the Queen of Hearts.
Alice symbolises the child in every adult: possessing not only insatiable curiosity which prompts her to chase metaphoric white rabbits but also the youthful innocence which causes moments of identity crisis in a world of ambivalent adult values.
Lewis Carroll - The First Monty Python?
Lewis Carroll is the original Monty Python. His ability to think logically enabled him to travel along a line of absurdity with perfect logic. There are innumerable instances in the Monty Python series that are reminiscent of Lewis Carroll’s style of humour. On the other hand, you could transpose some Carrollian scene or line into a Python sketch and find that it fits in very well.
Take, for example, Alice’s meeting with the White Knight in Through the Looking Glass:
Alice was walking beside the White Knight in Looking Glass Land.
"You are sad." the Knight said in an anxious tone: "let me sing you a song to comfort you.""Is it very long?" Alice asked, for she had heard a good deal of poetry that day.
"It's long." said the Knight, "but it's very, very beautiful. Everybody that hears me sing it - either it brings tears to their eyes, or else -"
"Or else what?" said Alice, for the Knight had made a sudden pause.
"Or else it doesn't, you know. The name of the song is called 'Haddocks' Eyes.'"
"Oh, that's the name of the song, is it?" Alice said, trying to feel interested.
"No, you don't understand," the Knight said, looking a little vexed. "That's what the name is called. The name really is 'The Aged, Aged Man.'"
"Then I ought to have said 'That's what the song is called'?" Alice corrected herself.
"No you oughtn't: that's another thing. The song is called 'Ways and Means' but that's only what it's called, you know!"
"Well, what is the song then?" said Alice, who was by this time completely bewildered.
"I was coming to that," the Knight said. "The song really is 'A-sitting On a Gate': and the tune's my own invention."
The Mad Hatter’s question "Why is a raven like a writing desk?" in Alice in Wonderland is another example of nonsense that one could imagine being uttered by John Cleese, a propos of nothing, with eyes popping in a manic stare. Lewis Carroll was ahead of his time and that could be said to be one definition of a genius. He is the source of some of the most original surreal concepts which have intrigued psychologists and philosophers and stimulated the imaginations of creative people in various artistic spheres.