Skip to main content

For Thursday: Carroll, Alice in Wonderland, Chapters I-VI



For Thursday's class, read at least through the "Pig and Pepper" Chapter (VI), though read more if you like. However, we're going to break this into two parts, so we'll finish the rest for next week. 

Answer TWO of the following:

Q1: How might Alice in Wonderland be a satire of a Victorian childhood? From what we read here, what might have been expected of young girls or children in the 1860's? What is Carroll specifically making fun of or parodying through Alice's adventures?

Q2: When Carroll originally wrote the book for Alice Liddell (the daughter of a friend), he included his own illustrations throughout. When the book was properly published, the publisher insisted on more professional illustrations, and John Tenniel (a popular artist) was hired to provide illustrations throughout. Why are the illustrations as important as the text of the story? What do they add to the experience of reading Alice in Wonderland? 

Q3: Writing about Magritte's paintings, Marcel Pacquet said that "Things have a flip side, a reverse, which is even more curious and fascinating than their manifested form." How does Carroll show us the same thing through Alice's adventures through the rabbit hole? Why might the entire book be a surrealist adventure into the mundane? 

Q4: Why do you think the work is so obsessed with eating and drinking (but mostly eating)? Why does she need to consume things to grow bigger or smaller? Could this relate to a child's understanding of how the world works? Sort of like the train coming through the chimney in Magritte's painting? 

 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

For Monday: Short Lecture on Colonialism and Mansfield

As a way to introduce you to some of the themes we'll be exploring with our last two books, I've recorded a short lecture (about 18 min.) that I would have discussed with you in class if we were still meeting. I know 18 minutes is a lot to watch in a single stretch, so feel free to start and stop, or simply leave it playing in the background. However, I think it will help you see and understand some of the larger ideas going on behind the scenes in Mansfield's stories.  AFTER you watch the video, answer the following question as a COMMENT below: "Since many women in the early 19th century tried to hide their identity as a woman by adopting a male name, or writing more 'male' stories, how do you think colonial writers did the same? That is, how did they hide their colonial identity in writing to sound more 'English'? What might they have had to hide, or ignore, or not reveal as a writer? (This will count toward your participation grade, since I can...
40 comments
Read more

Short Lecture on Being "Weak" in Mansfield's Stories

Before we race to the end of Mansfield's stories, I wanted to discuss some of the major themes we've encountered in several of them, particularly "Daughters of the Late Colonel," "The Life of Ma Parker," "Mr. and Mrs. Dove," and "Marriage a la Mode." Watch the video to hear some of my thoughts on these stories, most of which are drawn from your responses to the reading questions. It's a little longer than the last one, but still only about 25 minutes (sorry)!  After you finish, answer the following question as a COMMENT on the blog.  Q: Talking about emotions, love, death, or otherwise being "weak" was very taboo in British society at this time. What subjects or relationships do you feel are taboo in our own society? And I don't just mean awkward subjects (abortion, politics, etc.), but what emotions or experiences would you have trouble discussing with your parents, your siblings, your friends, and even your sig...
32 comments
Read more

For Friday: Wordsworth, "Ode: Intimations of Immortality"

“Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections in Early Childhood” (pp.51-57): read the entire poem, but the questions will only focus on Stanzas 1-7 NOTE: This is a longer poem, though it’s broken up into short stanza chapters.  Read it slowly, and focus on each stanza as an individual poem.  Then consider how each one develops a general ‘story’ or narrative about Wordsworth’s life.  Consider this, too, as a kind of mid-life crisis poem: Wordsworth feels himself pulling away from the innocent joys he used to experience in life, and the poem is an attempt to find himself—and to convince other readers to find themselves in the thickets of adulthood.  Answer TWO of the following... Q1: According to Stanzas 1-4, what causes the poet to feel distanced from the natural world?   What has come between him and his imagination/emotions?   In Stanza 2 he writes that “But yet I know, where’er I go,/That there hath past away a glory from the earth...
25 comments
Read more