It has taken Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland a little over a century from being regarded as nonsense, to become nonsensical, as is so vividly highlighted by the book’s songs/poems. Kenneth Rothwell, in his History of Shakespeare on Screen, lists seven kinds of derivatives a film may take when a literary work is adapted for the screen, none of which presupposes ‘accuracy’ with the original text. While the Disney adaptation may take credit for much of the confusion in the modern mind (even to the point where David Crystal accredits the Mad Hatter with the concept of a Happy Unbirthday), we need to look further afield to understand the failure of present-day audience’s to connect with the aesthetic of Carroll’s book. Adaptation for subsequent generations of a book Carroll wrote for an audience who were well-versed in the songs he was parodying, and who were informed about the people and events to whom references were being made, demands interpretation. While visually, iconic images from Alice may still be employed to satirise people and events, the power of the songs/poems has been lost in transmission, such that they now bemuse rather than amuse. The paper draws upon resources outlining the reception of Carroll’s book in his time, and attempts to examine the failure of the songs to resonate with today’s ‘audiences’, while other works written at the same time, notably those of Gilbert and Sullivan, have continued to be relevant.

Children’s literature was not recognized as a genre until the 18th century, and only in the late 19th century, did it start to respond to its audience’s interests. With the acknowledgment of the audience’s interest, the genre has reached its golden age, generally referred to as the late 19th and early 20th centuries. This change was achieved by a shift in both language and content, moving from didactic and religious narratives to more imaginative ones with fantastic elements and simpler language. Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865) and Juster’s The Phantom Tollbooth (1961) are significant examples of this achievement, sharing many similarities in content and form. This paper aims to analyze the attractive language and style of these books and reveal the ways the books promote reading to young audiences. To understand the impact of language and imaginary journeys of Alice and Milo, close reading will be the main method of literary analysis used throughout the paper. One of the most identifiable characteristics of these books is their frequent use of wordplay such as homophonic and idiomatic puns. These puns create humour, and along with the use of supernatural elements, they provide an easier reading experience for children. Milo and Alice represent many children who are confused about the adult world and the education it requires. At the end of their journeys, the protagonists feel relieved and more enthusiastic about the adult world, so that child readers can sympathize with them and become motivated to learn more. As a result of the representation of children’s struggle in the adult world through Alice and Milo, the elements of imagination, and the humorous language; Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and The Phantom Tollbooth attract children to learning through reading.

The current qualitative-analytic study was designed to compare two fantasy novels: Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and The Chronicles of Narnia with regards to their (1) Fantastic elements, (2) Use of animals in literature, and (3) Religious ideas and discussions on God. Furthermore, this study tries to confirm the hypothesis which claims the books were written to serve both children and adults. It reveals many similar points between the works of Lewis Carroll and C.S. Lewis. The commonality of the two writers lies in the fact that they both apply fantastic elements and anthropomorphic beings as tools to discuss their social concerns and to teach moral lessons. Even though the authors belong to different times, they bring the same opinion regarding God and religious beliefs, the controversial issue of their time. From another perspective, both writers move from reality to subjectivity. This can be explained by their emphasis on mind which has a significant role in Lewis Carroll’s and C.S. Lewis’s fantasy worlds. Both Lewis Carroll and C.S. Lewis were, arguably, religious men who were unsatisfied with the loss of faith in their societies.

Reading the book, Alice in Wonderland remains the best way of exploring its full creative range, and since is the story of a dream and the book was a great favourite of the surrealist. The aim of this research was to analyse the two different approaches of illustrating Alice in Wonderland, one published in 2012 and illustrated in a contemporary style by Japan’s surrealist artist, Yayoi Kusama; the other one, the classic literature illustrated by Sir John Tenniel, the original illustrator of the book. The outcomes of the analysis are to explain how with different support of design elements and principles, the new illustrations using new ways of interpretations of scenes, can hopefully enchant a new readership, by using methods of structured interviews were conducted to gather data from experts like designer and illustrator with in-depth interviews were done to gather information from various readers with different educational, professional, and cultural backgrounds.

This paper will examine an intricate journey that involves an interdisciplinary approach to visual culture. The 'Alice' novels of Lewis Carroll are used as a vehicle for exploration because of their thematic concerns and the way in which those concerns have been interpreted and disseminated in visual culture. The Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass and What she found There books written by Carroll and illustrated by John Tenniel first published in 1865 and 1871 respectively have provided an ongoing conversation with artists. Through Tenniel's illustrations, this conversation may be seen to reach back to Leonardo Da Vinci, as well as reaching forward through modernism, post- modernism and on to current art practices. The intention of this paper is to examine the use of Carroll's text and Tenniel's illustrations as reference material for visual artists, with particular focus on a dialogue created with Australian contemporary art...

In my book L’esthétique du jeu dans les Alice de Lewis Carroll (The Aesthetics of Play in Lewis Carroll’s Alice books), I have argued that Carroll’s own adaptation of Wonderland for children “aged from nought to five,” that is to say The Nursery Alice, so strictly constrains the implied reader’s participation that she cannot playfully counter-interpellate the text (thus referring to Judith Butler’s theory of subjection, subjectification and counter-interpellation). In other words, I have shown that the reader of The Nursery Alice cannot indulge in what Roger Caillois calls “paidia,” the impulsive manifestation of a play instinct, but can only adhere to “ludus,” the need to conform to rules. Contrariwise, as the Tweedle brothers would say, even if the 1865 Alice tries to limit the implied reader’s role, she can actively counter-interpellate the text, and play with and against its rules. For this presentation, I’d like to focus on the reader’s cooperation with the book-as-object, and reveal how the tension between subjection and agency characterizes both Carroll and Tenniel’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865) and paper engineering artist Robert Sabuda’s adaptation of this classic (2003). As Mou-Lan Wong has convincingly suggested, the reader is actively involved when reading the original Alice books, thereby, I would add, becoming a playful reader. The page-turning mechanism is exploited to the maximum, so much so that turning the pages does not merely mean getting access to the rest of the tale, but actually creating some of the Wonderland characters (145) and ultimately creating Wonderland (144). Similarly, when Sabuda discusses the creation of his pop-up books, he notes that the tension between subjection and agency lies at the core of his work: he wants to make “the paper listen and obey” (9) while knowing at the same time that “the paper will do what it wants to do” (10). My talk will then address the following question: is the reader of Sabuda’s Alice as playfully involved in the book as the reader of Carroll and Tenniel’s version is? or does the (too?) intricate pop-up device actually plan the reader’s role so much that her intervention is drastically limited? In other words, can Sabuda’s reader indulge in what Caillois calls “paidia” while at the same time recognizing the “ludic” rules of the pop-up game, or is she forced to abide by these rules without counter-interpellating them, consequently relinquishing any chance of being a playful reader?

In new interpretations of Lewis Carroll's <i>Alice</i> books in films, graphic novels, and videogames, the controlled menace of the original is transformed into outright violence, insanity, and sexual threat; Wonderland becomes unsuitable for children. In order to negotiate this hostile terrain, Alice must grow up; she is portrayed as a teenager or a young adult. The removal of the actual child from this children's classic demonstrates the anxieties that move from the margins to the centre of this narrative and suggest much about contemporary preoccupations surrounding the perils of growing up in the new century, but the motivations and outcomes are not always the same. I will examine this trend in representative works in various media including film (Tim Burton's 2010 <i>Alice in Wonderland</i>, videogames (the 2011 <i>Alice: Madness Returns), and graphic novels (Raven Gregory's 2009-2011 <i>Return to Wonderland</i>.).