Alice in Wonderland: from nonsense to nonsensical (original) (raw)

It has taken Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland a little over a century from being regarded as nonsense, to become nonsensical, as is so vividly highlighted by the book’s songs/poems. Kenneth Rothwell, in his History of Shakespeare on Screen, lists seven kinds of derivatives a film may take when a literary work is adapted for the screen, none of which presupposes ‘accuracy’ with the original text. While the Disney adaptation may take credit for much of the confusion in the modern mind (even to the point where David Crystal accredits the Mad Hatter with the concept of a Happy Unbirthday), we need to look further afield to understand the failure of present-day audience’s to connect with the aesthetic of Carroll’s book. Adaptation for subsequent generations of a book Carroll wrote for an audience who were well-versed in the songs he was parodying, and who were informed about the people and events to whom references were being made, demands interpretation. While visually, iconic images from Alice may still be employed to satirise people and events, the power of the songs/poems has been lost in transmission, such that they now bemuse rather than amuse. The paper draws upon resources outlining the reception of Carroll’s book in his time, and attempts to examine the failure of the songs to resonate with today’s ‘audiences’, while other works written at the same time, notably those of Gilbert and Sullivan, have continued to be relevant.