Alice with the Country of the Wonders

Alice with the country of the wonders is a work of Children's literature written by Pasteur mathematician Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, under the pseudonym Lewis Carroll. The book abounds with satirical allusions to the friends of the writer and the lessons which the British schoolboys were to memorize at the time. The country of the wonders, such as it is described in the Conte, plays unceasingly with logic.

The book knew a continuation entitled On other side of the mirror . The film adaptations often combine elements of the two books.

In XXIe century, the work remains popular as well near the children as mathematicians. The American writer Martin Gardner published The Annotated Alice (not translated into French) which gathers Alice with the country of the wonders and On other side of the mirror accompanied by the Poème S victoriens that Carroll parodied in the body text.

History

The book was published the July 4th 1865, three years after a walk in the boat on the the Thames carried out by the reverends Dodgson (Carroll) and Duckworth in company of three young girls:

Lorina Charlotte Liddell (13 years old, called PRIMA in the poem of opening)
Alice Liddell (10 years old, called Secunda in the poem of opening)
Edith Liddell (8 years old, called Tertia in the poem of opening)

The excursion started with the Folly bridge close to Oxford and further finishes ten kilometers in the village of Godstow. During the way, Dodgson told with the Liddell sisters a history that it had just invented. This one was followed later by Alice' S Adventures Underground and ends up becoming Alice' S Adventures in Wonderland .

Description

The intrigue

Alice is bored near her sister who reads a book while it does not do anything. She meets a white rabbit with the pink eyes vêtu of a Redingote, but that less does not astonish it by the world. To follow this pressed rabbit, which late marmonne unceasingly “, late I have appointment quelquepart”, is much more amusing to remain near his/her sister to look at the flies flying. She thus follows rabbit until in the depths of her burrow. But, more it is inserted in this underground world, more it is confronted with the Paradoxe, the Absurde and the Bizarre…

The character of Alice

“Loving like a dog”, as well as described Lewis Caroll in Alice with the scene , Alice is also “curious, extravagamment curious”. This character trait makes the exploring ideal one, more especially as the little girl shows from the start of a total unconcern, engaging in the burrow of Rabbit without thinking only one moment of the way in which it will be able about it to arise.

Alice is also of a exemplary Courtoisie, because she wants to prove with her entourage, which seems to regard it as too thoughtless and rêveuse, that she knows the good mannerss and all the lessons that she forces herself to learn. Its good education does not avoid however the blunders to him to which the conduit its spontaneous nature: thus does not hesitate she to speak about her Dinah she-cat to the Mouse of the Pond of tears…

Alice is also a very patient and attentive character towards the strange beings which it meets. Thus, it often stops to hear what each character has to say to him: she returns to hear the last sentence of the Worms with Silk, she listens to the songs of Tweedeldee and Tweedeldum, listens to the complaints of Tortoise-Imagination, and even tries to include/understand the illogical speeches of the diabolic trio of the Hatter, Hare of Mars and the Dormouse…

Gradually, Alice is inserted in an increasingly absurd world, which forces it with all to relativize and to seek logic, good sense; all these matters which she seeks in fact to flee in reality.

Other characters

Except Country of the wonders: the sister of Alice, the Dinah she-cat (only evoked)
the bestiary of the Pond of tears: the Mouse, the Duck, Dodo, Lori, the Eaglet
the Duchess, the Cooker and the Baby, the Footman
card deck: both, Five, Seven, the King of hearts, the Queen of heart, the Knave of hearts
the bestiary of the Country of the wonders: the white Rabbit, the Cat of Cheshire, Bill the lizard, the Caterpillar, the Pigeon, the Hare of March and the Dormouse (associates with the Hatter), Griffon, the Imitation-Tortoise

Country of the wonders

The Country of the wonders is for Alice terribly dépaysant. As of her arrival, the little girl finds herself in prey with a true crisis of Identité, because of the Métamorphose S physics which it undergoes, but also loss of the school knowledge to which it would like to refer so much to try to include/understand and to rationalize the strange world which surrounds it. Having forgotten its Poetry, it in addition becomes the agent of a parody of famous poems in England de Carroll.

The country is the place of the Contestation, by the means of the absurdity, of a certain established order of the real-world, in particular of arbitrary of the language: Humpty Dumpty, for example, defines as he hears it the word “glory” and updates the purely conventional nature of the bond between Signe and Sens. The text is also a criticism of the company victorienne, in particular of its “functional” interiors, where each thing must find and hold a minimal place: the Hare of Mars and the Hatter “arrange” the Dormouse in… the teapot. The brothers Twideuldee and Twideuldeume contradict without Alice stop. The cat of Cheshire contradicts itself.

The country is also a place of excess, where the greediness of Alice is unceasingly confronted with things which are drunk or eaten and which transform it physically, and where the cruelty of female characters as famous Reine of Heart is expressed without reserve.

With the Country of the wonders, time is put out of order, so much so that there is not enough of it, as for always pressed White Rabbit, or than one is annoyed with him, or, like the Hatter, than one is condemned to live eternally with the Heure of the.

One can interpret the country in several ways different: one can indeed regard it as a surrealist , coloured and ingenuous world , or as a esque place Cauchemard in which Alice finds itself taken with the trap of a world where logic was abandoned with the profit of the Psychose, a world populated ambiguous and worrying characters. Besides the ambiguity of the characters seems to be accentuated under the feature of John Tenniel, of which the pictorial representations of the protagonists are rather worrying.

Illustrators

The illustrations of John Tenniel seem today inseparable from the text of Lewis Carroll. However, other artists of talent illustrated the adventures of Alice, to begin with Carroll itself, which offered to Alice Liddell, on November 26th, 1864, a handwritten specimen of the history invented for it, decorated of 37 pen-and-ink drawings (). One can also mention the work of Arthur Rackham ().

Other illustrators:

Mabel Lucie Attwell ()
Bessie Pease Gutmann ()
Gwynedd Mr. Hudson ()
A.E. Jackson ()
Maria L. Kirk ()
Stalemate Andrea

Film adaptations and televised

Alice knew several adaptations of which here the principal ones:

Alice Comedies (dumb cartoons), (studio Walt Disney), 1924 - 1927
Alice in Wonderland (film), Norman Z. McLeod, 1933 (not of French-speaking distribution)
Alice with the country of the wonders (Franco-British feature-length film of animation), 1949
Alice with the country of the wonders (cartoon), Clyde Geronimi, Wilfred Jackson, Hamilton Luske (studio Walt Disney), 1951
Alice with the country of the wonders (telefilm), Jonathan Miller, 1966
Alice with the country of the wonders (telefilm), Kirk Browning, 1983
Alice with the country of the wonders . (televised series of animation nippo-allemande), 1983
Alice with the country of the wonders (film), Harry Harris, 1985
Alice (film), Jan Švankmajer, 1988
Alice with the country of the wonders (televised series), Nick Willing, 1999
Phantasmagoria (film), Marilyn Manson Soon
Alice (film of horror), Marcus Nispel, 2008
Alice with Country of the Wonders (film motion-captures " of it; 3D"), Tim Burton, (studio Walt Disney), 2009

Inspired by the tale

the Beatles develop similar surreal ideas in songs like Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds and I amndt the Walrus (literally “I am the Morse”, the Morse being that of On the other side of the mirror ).
Alice was adapted in two series of cartoons of Alan Moore: the League of the extraordinary gentlemen and Lost Girls ; also in dark and bloody a Video game: American McGee' S Alice and an album of Tom Waits.
One finds allusions to the adventures of Alice - the white Rabbit vector of change " follow the rabbit blanc" , pills blue and red - in the film Matrix . The film Donnie Darko also puts in scene a rabbit which, behind a mirror, guides the Donnie young person through his dreams.
CLAMP, group of Mangaka S, wrote Miyuki-chan in Wonderland , Manga inspired by the adventures of Alice with a key of erotism as well as an episode of the manga " Card Captor Sakura " in which heroin is found plunged in the tale.
Alice Liddell also seems one of the principal characters of the series in five volumes the River of eternity of Philip Jose Farmer, in particular in the last book, the Gods of the River , where it recreates even the universe of the tale.
Each chapter of the lampoon Le Monde as if of Francoise Morvan comprises an extract of Alice in epigraph (this book tells the tribulations of the author in Breton the separatists mediums).
the series of the years “80 of Alice to the Country of the Wonders comprises 52 episodes and takes as a starting point the 2 books while innovating.
Alice in Wonderland is the name of a sculpture of the artist Jose de Creeft going back to 1959. Directly inspired by the tale of Lewis Caroll, it is with Central Park (E. - U.).
In 2005, the group of French Rock Indo-China leaves an double album, Alice & June . The discs are called respectively Alice - With the country of the Nightmares - the promise and June - With the country of the Wonders - the Pact .
In 2000, the French group Klimperei leaves to In Poly Sons an album entitled Alice to the country the wonders , on translations of the poet Dominique Quélen, inspired of Alice , On other side of the mirror and Hunting for Snark (on this group and this album, cf in particular Inrockuptibles, n°322, 22 January 28th, 2002, p.46-47).
the song White Rabbit of Jefferson Airplane is inspired clearly by the history of Alice. She is reproduced on Surrealistic Pillow , that this headlight group of the scene of San Francisco left in 1967, in full period hippie. The pills which proposes the White Rabbit (White Rabbit) there are an allusion hardly buckled to the LSD, whose hippies and groups of acid rock'n'roll made an immoderate use.
Jorane, in its song Jinx , refers to white rabbit: “The only thing I did was trust the rabbit to open the right doors”.
an album of Jewel is entitled Goodbye, Alice in Wonderland .
the book Aliss of Patrick Sénécal is based on the tale, but is associated more with the kind of the horror.
the Québécois film the Odyssey of Alice Tremblay is based inter alia on this tale.
video games Super Mario Bros. is inspired clearly by Alice: Mario must indeed “eat” mushrooms to change size.
In 2005, the title of the second episode of season 8 of Charmed is entitled Malice in Wonderland and the principal history refers there since demons make use of the tale to be caught some with teenagers.
a film reporting the life of Lewis Caroll, carried out by Bryan Hugh Warner (Marilyn Manson), is in the course of turning.
One can also note the allusion which makes Guillermo Del Toro in its film " The Labyrinth of Pan" (" El Laberinto del Fauno") with " Alice with the country of the merveilles": its heroin, Ofélia, wear a dress very inspired by that of Alice.
the episode " Shore Leave" (season 1,15) of the televised series " Trek" star; open on the evocation by Dr. McCoy of the Country of the Wonders and, a little later by the vision of a giant white rabbit which, just like in the tale of Carroll, affirms late being with its go.

Anecdotes

the book would have been published three years day for day after the walk in the boat of the reverends and the young girls.

In 1998, a specimen of the first edition was sold 1,5 million Dollar S American, which is a sale record for a book for children. Only twenty-two specimens of the first edition of 1865 would have survived. Seventeen of them are in Bibliothèque S and five at private individuals.

Random links: