Carroll, Lewis - Elizabeth Sewell (essay date 1961)
Elizabeth Sewell (essay date 1961)
SOURCE: "Law-Courts and Dreams," in The Logic of Personal Knowledge, The Free Press, 1961, pp. 179-88.
[In the following excerpt, Sewell argues that the "real world" can be found in nonsense literature, particularly in the Barrister's dream in The Hunting of the Snark.]
… Alongside this law-court of dream [in Shakespeare's "Sonnet 87"] I want now to set another: that which is described in the Barrister's Dream, Fit the Sixth of Lewis Carroll's The Hunting of the Snark. Nonsense literature is, I believe, as valid and as closely knit with our ways of thought as any literary genre we have, so this juxtaposition need not, I hope, seem shocking. Its purpose is not to jolt but to help in this investigation, for which these verses provide interesting evidence. Actually, as I have suggested elsewhere, this particular narrative is not pure Nonsense. It admits too much of the real world, which is why it...
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