‘Alice in Wonderland’ changed literature forever, by not attempting to teach kids, just entertain them
The delights of nonsense
On July 4, 1862, a little-known math tutor at Oxford, Charles Dodgson, went on a boat trip together with friend, Reverend Robinson Duckworth, Alice Liddell along with her two sisters. The day that is next under the pen name Lewis Carroll, he began writing the storyline he made up for the girls — what he first called the “fairy-tale of ‘Alice’s Adventures Under Ground.’”
As Alice fell down, down, along the rabbit hole, so too have Carroll lovers after her, wanting to explain just how Wonderland made such huge waves in children’s literature. So how exactly does a global with a disappearing cat, hysterical turtle, and smoking caterpillar capture and hold readers’ imaginations, old and young from on occasion? It may seem obvious, but at that time, Carroll’s creation broke the principles in unprecedented ways that are new.
They departed from prior children’s books, which served as strict moral compasses in Western puritanical society, eventually adding more engaging characters and illustrations given that years passed.
But because of the time Carroll started recording his tale, children had a genre to call their very own, and literary nonsense was just taking off. The scene was set for Alice.
Written throughout the Golden Age that is first of Literature, Carroll’s classic is an absurd yet magnificently perceptive form of entertainment unlike something that came before if not after it.
B efore 1865, the entire year Alice went to press, children did not read books with stammering rabbits or curious girls who were unafraid to speak their minds:
`No, no!’ said the Queen. `Sentence first — verdict afterwards.’
`Stuff and nonsense!’ said Alice loudly. ` the basic idea of having the sentence first!’
`Hold your tongue!’ said the Queen, turning purple.
`I won’t!’ said Alice.
This type of rubbish certainly d >The Pilgrim’s Progress (1678), by Puritan John Bunyan, “was either forced upon children or maybe more probably actually enjoyed by them instead of anything better.”
Another illustrated number of short stories wasn’t even exclusive to children. Published in 1687, Winter-Evenings Entertainments’ title page read, “Excellently accommodated for the fancies of young or old.”
Books — even fables, fairytales, and knight-in-shining-armor stories — are not intended solely for the amusement of boys and girls. All of this started to change as people, such as Jean-Jacques Rousseau, started thinking about childhood in a way that is new. Rousseau rejected the Puritan belief that humans are born in sin. As Йmile, or On Education (1762) illuminates, he saw individuals as innately good, and kids as innocent. The essay helper fictitious boy Йmile learns through observing and getting together with the corrupt world he follows his instincts and grows from experience, like Alice around him.
Thus, because of the century that is mid-18th a romanticized portrayal of childhood — full of unbridled action, creative expression, innocent inferences, and good intentions — began seeping into children’s literature.
Authors and publishers dusted their stories with stylistic sprinkles, because children were no longer seen as needing to be determined by religion or etiquette guides in order to make feeling of the world. As writers realized the effectiveness of entertainment, preachy, elbows-off-the-table books became less dry. Books entered a new, more phase that is fantastical “instruction with delight.”
Publishers paired history, religion, morals, and social conventions with illustrations and nursery that is catchy. “Bah, bah, black sheep,” “Hickory dickory dock,” and “London Br >Tommy Thumb’s Pretty Song Book (1744). John Newbery, known as “The Father of Children’s Literature,” came out together with first book, A Little Pretty Pocket-Book (1744). The small, pretty edition was bound in colorful paper and was included with a ball for boys and pincushion for women — an imaginative means of expanding the children’s book market. Teaching young readers through amusing and playful techniques became a lot more popular, and thanks in large part to Newbery, children’s books had potential to be commercial hits.
This hybrid of storytelling, education, and entertainment became known as a “moral tale. by the end associated with the 18th century” As stories grew longer and more sophisticated, like Maria Edgeworth’s “Purple Jar” (1796), writers introduced “psychologically complex characters place in situations for which there wasn’t always a clear moral road to be taken.”
A milestone for authors like Carroll, these kind of tales gave characters, and in turn young readers, the capability to learn by doing and never by being told through a parent, preacher, or pedagogue. Alice embodied that shift:
“She had never forgotten that, if you drink much from a bottle marked `poison,’ it is
almost certain to disagree to you, in the course of time. However, this bottle was NOT marked `poison,’ so Alice ventured to taste it, and finding it very nice…she very soon finished it off.”
Unlike the familiar middle-class abodes or charming villages by which most moral tales were set, Alice swims in a pool of tears and plays croquet with flamingos and hedgehogs. At the time that is same she sticks up for herself, tries her best to utilize sound judgment and never gives up — values moral tales would encompass. Wonderland, though, perfectly satirizes the narrative that is instructive all the while epitomizing an emerging genre of that time called “nonsense literature.”
In a February 1869 letter to Alexander Macmillan, Carroll wrote, “The only point I really care for in the whole matter (and it’s also a supply of very real pleasure in my experience) is that the book should really be enjoyed by children — plus the more in number, the better.”
Carroll’s peculiar creation twists logic and language, but nonetheless is reasonable. Its characters that are non-human like people and contradict each other; however, its riddles and juxtapositions deconstruct the reality without destroying it.