Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Literary Nonsense: A Deconstructive Analysis of Lewis Carroll’s Novel

Abstract

This essay analyzes the main features of the nonsense genre, including its definition, characteristics and, especially, its relevance in the world of literature. Nonsense literature encourages the imagination of the reader, whether child or adult, and, at the same time, it motivates the use of the reader’s wisdom to make it even greater. It is not necessary to find out the intention of the writer while he or she was creating the book. The reader must interpret the text according to his own circumstances. Without any doubt, and according to Jacques Derrida (1930-2004), a critical reading must create a text because “there is nothing outside of the text.”Furthermore, the essay offers a deconstructive analysis of nonsense books by the well-known mathematician Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (1832-1898), who used to sign his novels with his pen name, Lewis Carroll. Particularly, the essay focuses its investigation on Carroll’s books about the unforgettable character of Alice, such as Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865) and Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There (1871). Indeed, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland has been one of the world’s most frequently translated works and, after Shakespeare, Carroll is possibly the world’s most quoted author. The famous books about Alice were notexpressly written for children; it is needless to say that also adults enjoy Carroll’s unsolved logic problems.Additionally, this essay contains an analysis of Carroll’s logic problems and their utility to understand further how the current world works, for example, through the understanding of physical laws. After reading a nonsense text by Carroll, the reader goes ahead rationally in order to discover and solve what is beyond the monotonous axioms in which we are used to live. But there is more: Carroll’s use of English is excellent, and his creation of coined words makes his texts even more authentic.