Lewis Carroll was a kindhearted yet, mystical man that became well known for his novels, essays, political pamphlets, and poetry. So what separates him from other popular writers and artists? The answer simply lies within his ingenious work. Carroll pushed boundaries to new limits, invented fresh literary techniques, and used his enigmatic thoughts to his advantage in many of his works.
Charles Lutwidge Dodgson was born in England in the early 1800‘s. Dodgson, best remembered by his pseudonym, Lewis Carroll, showed signs of extraordinary talent at a young age. He did not permanently take on the name Lewis Carroll until much later in life (“Lewis Carroll Biography”; “Lewis Carroll”; Woolf, “Lewis Carroll’s Shifting Reputation”). During this time period, “slavery was legal, cholera was rife in cities, Roman Catholics were barred from Parliament, and tiny children were being worked to death in factories” (Woolf, “The Mystery of Lewis Carroll” 24). Some critics believe many of these factors contributed to Carroll’s deep sense of melancholy.
Although, he had many brothers and sisters and was almost never alone, he was a troubled child. He appeared to always be outcast and was even thought to be sexually abused (“The Mystery of Lewis Carroll” 36). He was close with one of his sisters, Elizabeth, but never really shared much about his personal life with her (“Mystery of Carroll” 28). Elizabeth treated Carroll as if he was her son. In fact, Carroll’s diaries almost never refer to his birth-mother (“Mystery of Carroll” 41). Another influential person in Carroll’s childhood was his uncle, Robert W. Skeffington Lutwidge (“Mystery of Carroll” 38). In his journals, Carroll recounts his relationship with his uncle and how tha...
... middle of paper ...
...3.
"Lewis Carroll." Academy of American Poets. Poets.org, 1997-2014. Web. 10 Jan. 2014.
"Lewis Carroll Biography." The Biography Channel. A+E Television Networks, LLC. 2014. Web. 10 Jan. 2014.
Mallardi, Rosella. "The Photographic Eye And The Vision Of Childhood In Lewis Carroll." Studies In Philology 107.4 (2010): 548-572. Religion and Philosophy Collection. Web. 15 Jan. 2014.
Smith, B. Sidney. "Carroll’s Paradox." Platonic Realms Interactive Mathematics Encyclopedia. Platonic Realms, 8 Jun 2013. Web. 29 Jan. 2013.
Woolf, Jenny. "Lewis Carroll’s Shifting Reputation" Smithsonian.com. Smithsonian Magazine, April 2010. Web. 10 Feb. 2013.
Woolf, Jenny. The Mystery of Lewis Carroll: Discovering the Whimsical, Thoughtful, and Sometimes Lonely Man Who Created Alice in Wonderland. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2010. Print.
Even though a good number of critics despise Edgar Allen Poe with a passion, almost all who read his creations gave him credit for being a genius. He was the first to write a detective story and tales that dealt with split personality or divided consciousness way before the matter was well known by the common people. He managed to capture the imagination of the public by exploring the mysterious psychological world of the individual -- madness, despair, pain, inner chaos, etc. His works, which lack a sense of right or wrong, had great influence upon some types of popular fiction, with a detective story on the lead. Ranging from French symbolists, like Rimbrad and Mallarme, to American writers, such as Bierce, Melville, and Faulkner, were influenced by Poe's writings. He even inspired well-known Philosophers like Frederick Nietzsche and George Bernard Shaw. Just to mention a few, gothic architecture, psychological abnormalities, hidden...
Introduction Poe was famous for his works of mystery and dark poetry. He was not the most distinguished writer in American history, but he was the most versatile and well worth reading. He had an imagination that carried him away to an almost morbid dreamland, some say his gothic style of writing came from his own life, in which he suffered from depression.
Carroll’s works illustrate a firm understanding of nonsense. His stories and poems thrive in fantastic worlds of imagination. Because of this, they effortlessly thrive in the worlds of children, as well. Carroll writes with the mind of a child. He understood that, “For young children, whose brains are struggling to comprehend language, words are magical in any case; the magic of adults, utterly mysterious; no child can distinguish between "real" words and nonsensical or "unreal" words, and verse like [his] brilliant "Jabberwocky" has the effect of both arousing childish anxiety (what do these terrifying words mean?) and placating it (don't worry: you can decode the meaning by the context). Lewis Carroll, in whom the child-self abided through his celibate lifetime, understood instinctively the child's propensity to laugh at the very things that arouse anxiety…” (Oates 9)
As I mentioned earlier, Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, better known by his pseudonym Lewis Carroll, beside being an English author was a mathematician, logician, Anglican deacon and photographer . Carrol created the character of Alice to entertain a daughter of his good friend Dean of Christ Church, little girl named Alice Liddell. The story was first published in 1865.
Introduced by tragedies early in his life, Edgar Allan Poe became one of the most successful writers, poets, and storytellers to ever live. Edgar Allan Poe had the intelligence to do anything he wanted to do, however, the pain of losing his loved ones always seemed to drive him towards a pen and paper. His emotions never failed to show through his writings, which helped the story line touch the readers. Poe became very close to several different women but each would die shortly after he came to love them. This only pushed him to write more emotionally. Poe had a natural talent for putting his real life experiences into a fictional story and making it seem as if it were really happening.
Did Lewis Carroll’s life affect his writing in Through the Looking Glass? Lewis Carroll, or Charles L. Dodgson, was born on January 27, 1832 in Daresbury, Cheshire, England. He has 10 other siblings, though Carroll was the oldest. His father, a clergyman, raised Carroll and his siblings in a rectory. Carroll was a well respected man in England, he was a solid student in mathematics and received scholarships to Christ College. He was also an avid photographer. Lewis Carroll grew up with a bad stammer, but always found himself speaking fluently with little children for some peculiar reason. There were numerous aspects that affected Carroll’s writing throughout this time, and all throughout his lifetime.
Edgar Allan Poe is one of the most influential writers to date. His thrill filled tales of darkness and death helped people see a different side of romantic literature. Many believe that his isolated life and drinking problem helped influence his works. Poe showed his most prominent life accomplishment and disappointments through his life in his stories. He defined a lot of his life’s parallels through his works.
Details come from his own personal knowledge of them, and his only way to release and use his own imagination was to write his thoughts and feelings down for others to read. Edgar Allan Poe may not have had any recognition during his lifetime, but in the years and decades following his death, his writing has become a huge influence to people and writers. Poe had a very fascinating imagination and he wrote certain style way, which many writers could not write. While he often wrote about dark topics, Poe's best-known fiction works are Gothic. He inspired a new generation of writers but not until years after his death did his level of inspiration become known.
Lewis Carroll, world renowned author, known most for his tale of literary nonsense published almost a century and a half ago, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. Several conditions of Carroll’s life molded and shaped his writing. Evidence from Carroll’s book, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland ,one can conclude that Carroll has engraved moments from his life, people around him ,as well as his beliefs and love of logic into his story, considering these are the things that Alice Liddell would recognize.
There are some critics that argue that Lewis Carroll wasn’t highly religious if religious at all. A popular topic relating to Lewis Carroll’s religious practices is whether or not he expressed any of his beliefs in his widely known story Alice in Wonderland. Hidden deep in the contexts of Alice in Wonderland, it’s clear that Alice in Wonderland is an allegory to the Christian Bible and contains multiple references to some biblical themes, characters, or events. Whether intentional or not, Lewis Carroll wrote characters, paragraph, and even chapters that mirror some of the most well-known scenes in the Bible.
Along with his love for playing-on-words in the story, Carroll also provided an original poem that he wrote at the beginning of the novel before the first chapter that serves as an epigraph for the book, suggesting the story’s theme and origin. The poem opens with a description of the sunny, summer day in 1862 when Carroll and his Oxford friend Liddell’s three daughters went out on a boat trip on the river together, where the story of Alice all started. During the outing, the girls—addressed in the epigraph as Prima, Secunda, and Tertia—beg Carroll to tell them a story, as he often did when he was with them. He claims that he is too tired on account of the rowing and the “dreamy weather,” (stanza 2, line 2), but he gives in as he finds himself
On January 27, 1832 Charles Lutwidge Dodgson was born in Daresbury, Cheshire Country, England. In 1943 his family moved to the croft Rectory in Richmondshire, North Yorkshire, while he was enrolled at the Richmond public school. Three years later at the age of fourteen in the year of 1846, he went on to the Rugby school in Warwickshire. He spent three years at the school in Warwickshire and left in the year of 1849. Later he went to Oxford in 1851 and earned a B.A. with first class honors in mathematics and second class in classics in 1854. Several years later in 1857 he graduated with an M.A. finishing his studies at oxford. The year 1856 was advent of the use “Lewis Carroll” an Anglicized pseudonym, which he took to publish all his literary works. Mirroring his father’s career path, he obtained the position of Mathematical Lecturer at Oxford which he maintained from 1856 to 1881. Year 1861 he received holy orders, becoming a deacon at the Christ Church Cathedral, however he was unable to be ordained a priest due to his lack of interest in ministration. In 1865 he published the novel Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, his most renowned literary pieces that is still talked about to this day. Four years later he published Phantasmagoria, a ten year collection of poems, and seven years after that was The Hunting of the Snark. All work associated with his knowledge of mathematics, such as Two Books of Euclid, Elementary Treatise on...
In such a cherished children’s book, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, written in 1865, has caused great commotion in political and social satire. It slowly but surely grew into one of the most adored publications in the Victorian era, expanding into today’s modern age. Lewis Carroll was the pen name utilized by Charles L. Dodgson and has forth created a sequel named Through the Looking Glass, And What Alice Found There composed first in 1871. In short, the text of the story presented with a feminist approach, a corrupt judicial system of Victorian England, the caucus race, and the absence of a childhood, the evolution of species, and Marxism.
Ultimately, Romanticism is responsible for transforming the purpose of children’s literature and, as a result, society's image of children. Thus, helping to establish the importance of the imagination. Through its themes of romanticism, Carroll crafts a story that is anti-didactic by its very nature. The innocence and imagination of childhood offers redemption to fallen adulthood.
Known for its utilitarianist ideals, the education system of the Victorian Era limited the thoughts, speech, and actions of the individual; People were the product of the Victorian society in which they were raised. Many Victorian novelists highlight this mechanization of human beings, as it contributed to the identity crisis epidemic of the Victorian Era in which children were especially affected. In Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, Lewis Carroll uses the emphasis of facts in the Victorian education system, the likeliness of Victorian Society to discourage the use of the imagination, and the importance of ideal male and female roles of the Victorian citizen, imposed on children at a young age, to create Alice’s confused character analogous to the identity crisis of children during the Victorian era.