Lewis Carroll (Charles Lutwidge Dodgson) was famous for his stories Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass. Carroll was born in Cheshire (England), on January 27, 1832 and died on January 14, 1898 in Guildford. Professor of Mathematics at Oxford, he was also a deacon of the Church of England and amateur photographer. A quiet and solitary man, suffering from stammering, he was almost a recluse all his life inside the walls of the University. He never married and preferred the company of children, especially girls, to adults.
In his two most famous stories, he demystifies the so-called "Wonderland." His books contain no moral, in which all the characters, or nearly all, also have defects. Some of his characters are funny, others blatantly unpleasant, others rebels.
A professor of Mathematics and Logic, Carroll was an inventive genius, and sought to transform everything into play, by which one should understand the language which revels in puns, palindromes, inversions, nonsense, and other rhetorical figures and references to cultural and historical events.
Pedro Braga, in this book, captivates the reader with this playful climate and proposes a reading not only political, but also philosophical, demonstrating possession of the necessary instruments arising from Literary Theory and Comparative Literature. Erudite without being pretentious, he leads the reader on an intertextual journey, often by unusual paths, via Shakespeare, Edgar Allan Poe, James Joyce and the philosopher George Berkeley. He also enjoys unravelling certain riddles proposed by Carroll, and some puzzles which are explicit or underlie the two stories of the brilliant Oxford professor. Pedro Braga also proposes bold possibilities of interpretation, based on logic and mathematics. This is a serious book without being humourless, written in a tone of someone who plays (or participates in) carrollinian games, showing great rigor in his well-founded approach, and he intends thus to uncover what is hidden behind the mirror of Wonderland.
In his two most famous stories, he demystifies the so-called "Wonderland." His books contain no moral, in which all the characters, or nearly all, also have defects. Some of his characters are funny, others blatantly unpleasant, others rebels.
A professor of Mathematics and Logic, Carroll was an inventive genius, and sought to transform everything into play, by which one should understand the language which revels in puns, palindromes, inversions, nonsense, and other rhetorical figures and references to cultural and historical events.
Pedro Braga, in this book, captivates the reader with this playful climate and proposes a reading not only political, but also philosophical, demonstrating possession of the necessary instruments arising from Literary Theory and Comparative Literature. Erudite without being pretentious, he leads the reader on an intertextual journey, often by unusual paths, via Shakespeare, Edgar Allan Poe, James Joyce and the philosopher George Berkeley. He also enjoys unravelling certain riddles proposed by Carroll, and some puzzles which are explicit or underlie the two stories of the brilliant Oxford professor. Pedro Braga also proposes bold possibilities of interpretation, based on logic and mathematics. This is a serious book without being humourless, written in a tone of someone who plays (or participates in) carrollinian games, showing great rigor in his well-founded approach, and he intends thus to uncover what is hidden behind the mirror of Wonderland.
