Lewis Carrol and Iris Murdoch: dialigue after a century

Abstract

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.