Alice in Wonderland is full to the brim with wild humour, farcical fantasy, witty wisecracks, and even slapstick comedy. But because this whimsical tale and its fantasy world is so nonsensical and enjoyable, you’ll want to return there many a time, and enjoy its sheer madcap humour. What Lewis Carroll really wants us to do is return to reality along with Alice with a renewed appreciation for everything that is normal and accepted. For example the farcical trial at the end is generally understood to be a lampooning of the British legal system. There's also a lot of political commentary and parody of the popular culture of the day which he identifies and explains. As a mathematician, he especially points out many of the clever logical and mathematical concepts found in the story. ![]() In this annotated version, Gardner explores a lot of the imagery and ideas of the Alice in Wonderland story, and explains some of the references and influences behind the characters and more. There's a wonderful version of the book entitled The Annotated Alice, that was produced by famous mathematician and logician Martin Gardner. Behind the outer layer of apparent `nonsense' Carroll conveys a great deal of sense. Is Alice in Wonderland all nonsense? I don’t think so, because there's much more to this story than first meets the eye. “…they drew all manner of things – everything that begins with an M –” In one of the book's more famous scenes, Alice finds herself at a mad tea-party together with the March Hare, a Hatter, and a Dormouse., where she is bombarded with paradoxical riddles, and astonished with absurd logic. “I thought it would,” said the Cat, and vanished again. “It turned into a pig,’ Alice answered very quietly, just as if the Cat had come back in a natural way. “By-the-bye, what became of the baby?” said the Cat. Consider this excerpt from an absurd conversation Alice has with the Cheshire Cat: We find ourselves in a land which is populated by an arrange of fantastic characters that entertain us with their wit and whimsy. In this story, Lewis Carroll gives us a picture of a world where everything that we accept as normal is turned upside down. If you were the kind of child who always asked the “why?” question, and who liked to challenge what everyone else regarded as normal, you’ll love this book. This project is a true typographically accurate replica of the original Macmillan edition and this free digital edition was produced by VolumeOne. I suggest you head here, where you'll find a downloadable PDF of a virtual edition created by Peter Zelchenko in 1998 for BookVirtual. If you don't have a copy of the book, you can easily find it online, because the copyright has long lapsed. In Alice in Wonderland we see all these skills and interests on display, and come together in a wonderful and charming story. Lewis Carroll was the pen name of Charles Dodgson, who excelled in playing with words, and delighted in logic and fantasy. ![]() You really owe it to yourself to read the original book by Lewis Carroll, first published in 1865. But if you're like most people, then you've only been exposed to Alice via Disney films, or perhaps through an abridged version for young children. This story is one that almost everyone has come across in their life. The example that will spring to mind for most people is Lewis Carroll's classic work, Alice in Wonderland. But are there other examples besides Jostein Gaarder's The Solitaire Mystery (see my previous article) where playing cards become central characters, and key figures in the story? Perhaps we find them in the hands of characters who are having a social game of bridge, or in the hands of gamblers trying their luck at Blackjack at a casino or playing Poker in the back room of a saloon. It's not hard to think of examples of books where playing cards are part of the wider background of a novel. But how about novels that depict playing cards? Already for centuries playing cards have embedded themselves into our lives and culture, and crawled their way into language, paintings, and music. In an earlier article I shared some of my favourite playing cards that depict novels.
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