LEWIS CARROLL: THROUGH THE LOOKING-GLASS

Details: The popularity of Lewis Carroll's Alice in wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass has not waned ever since they were published in the mid-victorian era. The tales play with logic, giving the narrative lasting popularity with adults as well as children. Considered among the best examples of the literary nonsense genre, their narrative course and structure, characters and imagery have been enormously influential in both popular culture and literature, especially in the fantasy genre. Through the Looking Glass uses chess as a metaphor for a deterministic conception of life language as a means to order the world, and the inescapable loneliness a child feels growing up as its themes. This critical study explores and analyses these themes, as well as motifs and symbols in the book along with critical problems associated with the text to make it accessible to our university students. Shakti Batra has been Vice-principal, Dyal Singh College (University of Delhi), has also taught at the Kabul University and the University of Kyrgyzstan, Bishkek.