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Alice in Wonderland: rabbit-holes, mad mathematics and the elephant in the room

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Manage episode 438740828 series 3598585
Content provided by Sophie Gee and Jonty Claypole, Sophie Gee, and Jonty Claypole. All podcast content including episodes, graphics, and podcast descriptions are uploaded and provided directly by Sophie Gee and Jonty Claypole, Sophie Gee, and Jonty Claypole or their podcast platform partner. If you believe someone is using your copyrighted work without your permission, you can follow the process outlined here https://podcastplayer.com/legal.

Alice in Wonderland is one of the most widely translated and quoted books in the world, and yet it is - quite literally - nonsense. How was it ushered into the world and why did it travel quite so far?


Lewis Carroll, or Charles Dodgson to his mum and dad, was born in the north of England in 1832. Somehow, the unique circumstances of his life - a wild imagination, hatred of Victorian morality, appalling board school, love of mathematics and photography, debilitating stutter and a not entirely reassuring interest in children - came together in a children’s story of breathtaking originality.

Join Sophie and Jonty as they get to grips with this unlikely phenomenon, reveal how Karl Marx, Charles Darwin, the speech pathologist James Hunt, Alice Lidell and an extinct bird all played their part in bringing Alice into being, and ask whether his affection for young girls was part of the spirit of the age or something more disturbing.

Recommended reads: Morton N Cohen, Lewis Carroll: A Biography (Knopf, 1995); Robert Douglas-Fairhurst, The Story of Alice (Harvard University Press 2015); Jenny Woolf, The Mystery of Lewis Carroll (Haus Books, 2010)and Jonty Claypole, Words Fail Us Chapter 9 ( Wellcome, 2021); Gillian Beer, Alice in Space: The Sideways World of Lewis Carroll (University of Chicago Press, 2016).


Support the show

Producer: Boyd Britton

Digital Content Coordinator: Olivia di Costanzo

Designer: Peita Jackson

Our thanks to the University of Sydney Business School.


Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

  continue reading

81 episodes

Artwork
iconShare
 
Manage episode 438740828 series 3598585
Content provided by Sophie Gee and Jonty Claypole, Sophie Gee, and Jonty Claypole. All podcast content including episodes, graphics, and podcast descriptions are uploaded and provided directly by Sophie Gee and Jonty Claypole, Sophie Gee, and Jonty Claypole or their podcast platform partner. If you believe someone is using your copyrighted work without your permission, you can follow the process outlined here https://podcastplayer.com/legal.

Alice in Wonderland is one of the most widely translated and quoted books in the world, and yet it is - quite literally - nonsense. How was it ushered into the world and why did it travel quite so far?


Lewis Carroll, or Charles Dodgson to his mum and dad, was born in the north of England in 1832. Somehow, the unique circumstances of his life - a wild imagination, hatred of Victorian morality, appalling board school, love of mathematics and photography, debilitating stutter and a not entirely reassuring interest in children - came together in a children’s story of breathtaking originality.

Join Sophie and Jonty as they get to grips with this unlikely phenomenon, reveal how Karl Marx, Charles Darwin, the speech pathologist James Hunt, Alice Lidell and an extinct bird all played their part in bringing Alice into being, and ask whether his affection for young girls was part of the spirit of the age or something more disturbing.

Recommended reads: Morton N Cohen, Lewis Carroll: A Biography (Knopf, 1995); Robert Douglas-Fairhurst, The Story of Alice (Harvard University Press 2015); Jenny Woolf, The Mystery of Lewis Carroll (Haus Books, 2010)and Jonty Claypole, Words Fail Us Chapter 9 ( Wellcome, 2021); Gillian Beer, Alice in Space: The Sideways World of Lewis Carroll (University of Chicago Press, 2016).


Support the show

Producer: Boyd Britton

Digital Content Coordinator: Olivia di Costanzo

Designer: Peita Jackson

Our thanks to the University of Sydney Business School.


Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

  continue reading

81 episodes

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