Criticism > Poetry > Carroll, Lewis - Beverly Lyon Clark (essay date 1982)

Carroll, Lewis - Beverly Lyon Clark (essay date 1982)

Beverly Lyon Clark (essay date 1982)

SOURCE: "Carroll's Well-Versed Narrative: Through the Looking-Glass," in English Language Notes, Vol. 20, No. 2, December 1982, pp. 65-76.

On Carroll's parodies:

… Carroll was a wretched poet when he tried to be serious: he became mawkish or sentimental. But Carroll was a masterly poet when he parodied—either a particular poem like Wordsworth's "Resolution and Independence" or a type of poem like the ballad. The celebrated "Jabberwocky" is a parody of Anglo-Saxon poetry, as Carroll originally printed its first stanza as being—Old English poetry as it would appear to a modern reader. It was probably also a fun-making at the expense of antiquarian scholars who made so much of the archaic poetry which was not to the taste of Carroll: he was very much of a modern and a Tennyson-worshipper.

Generations of scholars have worked at the identification of the poems...

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