Redefining the grotesque body: Alice’s curious appetite and laughter.

Lewis C. Carroll's Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass are novels that through their distortions of the real diverge from mainstream Victorian realism. By foregrounding the discrepancy between the grotesque universe of Alice’s Wonderland and the harsh lived reality of Victorian so...

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Main Author: Hu, Fengshan.
Other Authors: Tamara Silvia Wagner
Format: Final Year Project
Language:English
Published: 2011
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Online Access:http://hdl.handle.net/10356/46418
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Institution: Nanyang Technological University
Language: English
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spelling sg-ntu-dr.10356-464182019-12-10T14:11:50Z Redefining the grotesque body: Alice’s curious appetite and laughter. Hu, Fengshan. Tamara Silvia Wagner School of Humanities and Social Sciences DRNTU::Humanities::Literature::English Lewis C. Carroll's Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass are novels that through their distortions of the real diverge from mainstream Victorian realism. By foregrounding the discrepancy between the grotesque universe of Alice’s Wonderland and the harsh lived reality of Victorian society, these novels can be used to offer perspectives into an alternative world that is reflected of the grotesque to expose the Victorian society’s refusal to acknowledge reality. Carroll uses both grotesque imagery and modes of expression to mock the frivolity of the Victorian obsession for body alteration and appearance-based identities by subverting what is normal into an anomaly. The grotesque physicality and emotionality Alice encounters, her bodily metamorphosis and breakdown of fixed identities––seen as a rebellion against Victorian values, remains a continuous metaphor that is also absolutely essential for both the mental growth and development of any young innocent Victorian girl child into womanhood. On the whole, the grotesque rendering of the Alice novels allows us to revisit and re-examine Victorian ideology and its modes of representation in ways that rebel against the hyper logical, giving new perspectives on the everyday reality of life. Bachelor of Arts 2011-12-06T01:09:39Z 2011-12-06T01:09:39Z 2011 2011 Final Year Project (FYP) http://hdl.handle.net/10356/46418 en Nanyang Technological University 28 p. application/pdf
institution Nanyang Technological University
building NTU Library
country Singapore
collection DR-NTU
language English
topic DRNTU::Humanities::Literature::English
spellingShingle DRNTU::Humanities::Literature::English
Hu, Fengshan.
Redefining the grotesque body: Alice’s curious appetite and laughter.
description Lewis C. Carroll's Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass are novels that through their distortions of the real diverge from mainstream Victorian realism. By foregrounding the discrepancy between the grotesque universe of Alice’s Wonderland and the harsh lived reality of Victorian society, these novels can be used to offer perspectives into an alternative world that is reflected of the grotesque to expose the Victorian society’s refusal to acknowledge reality. Carroll uses both grotesque imagery and modes of expression to mock the frivolity of the Victorian obsession for body alteration and appearance-based identities by subverting what is normal into an anomaly. The grotesque physicality and emotionality Alice encounters, her bodily metamorphosis and breakdown of fixed identities––seen as a rebellion against Victorian values, remains a continuous metaphor that is also absolutely essential for both the mental growth and development of any young innocent Victorian girl child into womanhood. On the whole, the grotesque rendering of the Alice novels allows us to revisit and re-examine Victorian ideology and its modes of representation in ways that rebel against the hyper logical, giving new perspectives on the everyday reality of life.
author2 Tamara Silvia Wagner
author_facet Tamara Silvia Wagner
Hu, Fengshan.
format Final Year Project
author Hu, Fengshan.
author_sort Hu, Fengshan.
title Redefining the grotesque body: Alice’s curious appetite and laughter.
title_short Redefining the grotesque body: Alice’s curious appetite and laughter.
title_full Redefining the grotesque body: Alice’s curious appetite and laughter.
title_fullStr Redefining the grotesque body: Alice’s curious appetite and laughter.
title_full_unstemmed Redefining the grotesque body: Alice’s curious appetite and laughter.
title_sort redefining the grotesque body: alice’s curious appetite and laughter.
publishDate 2011
url http://hdl.handle.net/10356/46418
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