Lewis Carrol and Iris Murdoch: dialigue after a century

The article dwells upon influences of L.Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland in Iris
Murdoch’s early novel The Flight from the Enchanter. The analysis is conducted in
the terms of inheritance and contradiction with the traditional classical 19th c.
nonsense and fairy tales. Attention is paid to the fact that assimilating and embodying
the deeper structural principles of Carroll’s nonsense Iris Murdoch stays in strong
opposition to the child’s (childish) mentality. The results show that these principles
(“child’s” thinking, enchantedness, believing the unbelievable, wordplay as the
structural basis) are found in Murdoch’s novel but represent the immaturity with
which she strongly polemizes.