Nature of Reality in "Alice in Wonderland"

Paper Summary:

This paper relates that Lewis Carroll's "Alice in Wonderland" is the quintessential portmanteau allegory with themes ranging from evolution, growing up in an adult world, class structure in Victorian society, meaning and manners and human sexuality; however, the glue that holds these themes together is the plasticity of reality and the subjectivity of meaning. The author points out that in "Alice in Wonderland", the device of the rabbit hole, which establishes the entire underground setting of the book, replicates the cave in the "Allegory of the Cave" from Plato's "Republic" because control, enlightenment and freedom are all prominent in both allegories. The paper explains that many of the bizarre images in Lewis Carroll's "Alice in Wonderland" are actually literal--or actually figurative since they involve figures--expressions of figurative expressions, which are actually literal because they involve letters and words. Long quotations.

Table of Contents
Alice in PlatoLand: The Allegory of Wonder
The Cave
Properties of the Forms
Forms in "Alice in Wonderland"
Factor of the Mathematical Pun on 'Remain'

From the Paper:

"An allegory employs a literal story to convey a figurative meaning. Through allegory, a more complex subject or idea is described in terms of that of a lower which is made out to resemble it in properties and circumstances, the principal subject remains obscure leaving the reader to make the connection between the secondary and the primary subjects. The subject of both Plato and Carroll's allegories is appearance and reality---or the good or the true."

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