Alice's Adventures in Wonderland Decoded: The Full Text of Lewis Carroll's Novel with its Many Hidden Meanings RevealedBy David Day
Downloading and install guide Alice's Adventures In Wonderland Decoded: The Full Text Of Lewis Carroll's Novel With Its Many Hidden Meanings RevealedBy David Day in this web site lists can provide you more advantages. It will certainly show you the best book collections and also completed compilations. A lot of publications can be located in this website. So, this is not only this Alice's Adventures In Wonderland Decoded: The Full Text Of Lewis Carroll's Novel With Its Many Hidden Meanings RevealedBy David Day However, this publication is described check out due to the fact that it is an impressive publication to offer you a lot more chance to obtain encounters as well as thoughts. This is straightforward, read the soft data of guide Alice's Adventures In Wonderland Decoded: The Full Text Of Lewis Carroll's Novel With Its Many Hidden Meanings RevealedBy David Day as well as you get it.
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland Decoded: The Full Text of Lewis Carroll's Novel with its Many Hidden Meanings RevealedBy David Day
Read and Download Ebook Alice's Adventures in Wonderland Decoded: The Full Text of Lewis Carroll's Novel with its Many Hidden Meanings RevealedBy David Day
This gorgeous 150th anniversary edition of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland is also a revelatory work of scholarship. Alice's Adventures in Wonderland--published 150 years ago in 1865--is a book many of us love and feel we know well. But it turns out we have only scratched the surface. Scholar David Day has spent many years down the rabbit hole of this children's classic and has emerged with a revelatory new view of its contents. What we have here, he brilliantly and persuasively argues, is a complete classical education in coded form--Carroll's gift to his "wonder child" Alice Liddell. In two continuous commentaries, woven around the complete text of the novel for ease of cross-reference on every page, David Day reveals the many layers of teaching, concealed by manipulation of language, that are carried so lightly in the beguiling form of a fairy tale. These layers relate directly to Carroll's interest in philosophy, history, mathematics, classics, poetry, spiritualism and even to his love of music--both sacred and profane. His novel is a memory palace, given to Alice as the great gift of an education. It was delivered in coded form because in that age, it was a gift no girl would be permitted to receive in any other way. Day also shows how a large number of the characters in the book are based on real Victorians. Wonderland, he shows, is a veritable "Who's Who" of Oxford at the height of its power and influence in the Victorian Age. There is so much to be found behind the imaginary characters and creatures that inhabit the pages of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. David Day's warm, witty and brilliantly insightful guide--beautifully designed and stunningly illustrated throughout in full colour--will make you marvel at the book as never before.
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland Decoded: The Full Text of Lewis Carroll's Novel with its Many Hidden Meanings RevealedBy David Day- Amazon Sales Rank: #327850 in Books
- Published on: 2015-09-29
- Released on: 2015-09-29
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 11.80" h x 1.00" w x 8.50" l, 1.25 pounds
- Binding: Hardcover
- 320 pages
Review
"This is the kind of book that could keep list-makers for an alternate-universe Buzzfeed site busy forever. . . . Day's book proves . . . that Carroll's work, and its indefatigable young protagonist, is itself a rabbit hole of mystery waiting to be discovered." —Quill & Quire"For an exhaustive and entertaining account of how Lewis Carroll amused contemporaries in his favourite children's story, it may be impossible to top David Day's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland Decoded." —The Vancouver Sun"It's no surprise to Lewis Carroll fans and scholars that Wonderland is a rich, multi-layered text. But Day's work engages and enlightens the casual reader in a way few scholarly works can, and the beautiful book makes for an essential keepsake for any Alice lover." —New York Daily News"The book has never been out of print and each year brings new editions of—and books about—Alice in Wonderland. . . . Standouts this year include the beautifully illustrated and organized Alice's Adventures in Wonderland Decoded." —Chicago Tribune"We all think we know Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, but David Day's seductively scholarly new look at the background to the tale reveals the rich and labyrinthine workings of its creator and the Victorian mindset that inspired it. His lively, thoroughly researched investigations expand and enlarge all our ideas about the Alice story, and give a whole new life to a much-loved classic." —Michael Palin"I've been reading the Alice adventures since my childhood, and David Day's book is the one I would have wanted to write, had I his talent, wit and wisdom. Decoded is the perfect vade mecum for all travellers, new and seasoned, who venture into Alice's realms. In the words of the poet, 'O frabjous Day!'" —Alberto Manguel, author of A History of Reading"David Day combines the expertise of an academic with the fervor of a true Alice enthusiast. . . . In a remarkable act of literary excavation, Day exposes the historical references, classical allusions and subtly disguised symbols that he thinks Carroll embedded in the tale of Wonderland as lessons for his protégé, Alice Liddell. The volume includes Carroll's novel in full, supplemented by Day's observations as he painstakingly traces the various themes—music and philosophy, mathematics and poetry—that run through Carroll's narrative, proving along the way that Alice, even as it celebrates the absurd, exhibits airtight logic. Richly illustrated, this is a book Alice addicts will find irresistible." —BookPage"Day has succeeded in making his thoroughly researched and persuasively argued book appealing also for lovers of Alice as well as for general readers interested in Victorian literature and society." —Library Journal
About the Author
DAVID DAY has published 40 books of poetry, ecology, history, fantasy, mythology and fiction. He has been published in magazines and newspapers worldwide. He has also been a magazine editor, a columnist for the Daily Mail and Punch, a scriptwriter for television, a playwright for theatre, and a dramaturge for the Royal Birmingham Ballet. His books have won numerous literary awards and been selected as "Books of the Year" by Time magazine, New Scientist, Parents magazine and The Observer. David Day's books--for both adults and children--have sold over 4 million copies and have been translated into twenty languages.
Where to Download Alice's Adventures in Wonderland Decoded: The Full Text of Lewis Carroll's Novel with its Many Hidden Meanings RevealedBy David Day
Most helpful customer reviews
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful. Shaky guesswork, suppressed citations, outright fibs & one strong idea By Tevis Fen-Kortiay Author David Day has assembled 300 pages of mostly way-out-there guesses about secret allegorical patterns he believes might be hidden in the Wonderland story: chiefly the classical curriculum, with special emphasis on Greek mythology, mathematics and logic, plus a few esoteric subjects like Freemasonry, Theosophy, Rosicrucianism and Cabala. He also believes that every character and situation in Wonderland is meant to represent people and events in Oxford society. The actual physical book is very nicely designed by CS Richardson and will look lovely on any coffee table; The content is a frustrating mix consisting mostly of extremely-unpersuasive guesses - nearly always misrepresented as established facts - outright misinformation, and information which is accurate but borrowed from earlier Alice books without crediting those sources, all couched in a distasteful and unfair 'mean girl' tone.Guesses presented as facts: On every page Day includes educated guesses which *might* be true, but he frames as statements of certainty. Examples: "The real-life Oxford White Rabbit was Alice Liddell's family physician, Dr. Henry Wentworth Acland" (quite plausible), or "many aspects of Wonderland are parodies of Plato's Republic" (extremely implausible). A good chunk of these claims are within the realm of possibility, but as Day shares no proof, nor even a citation, palming off his guesses as facts essentially amounts to outright fibbing.Suppressed citations: Every idea in this book which I find valuable, save one, has appeared in earlier Alice books, but Day deliberately withholds citations, saying only "I cannot now even guess how many [Alice books] I have read over the last couple of decades" and providing a short list of his favorites. So if you want to follow up on a claim to learn more, Day blocks you from doing so - your only hope is to read every Alice book ever published. If you wish to learn which claims are original to Day and which he borrowed from an earlier author, Day again blocks you from learning this. In the sciences this practice is called 'suppressing citations,' and it is considered a rather underhanded attempt to steal credit for other people's work.Misinformation: Day's factual claims are often incorrect. For example, he calls the descent of Inanna 'the oldest recorded myth in world literature' - Gilgamesh is older. Day claims that Peter Llewelyn Davis was 'the inspiration for Peter Pan' - nope; J. M. Barrie said that Davies inspired his character in name only, but the press of the time jumped on the idea, tagging Davies as 'The Original Peter Pan' - that false claim hounded him all his life, and appears to be one the primary motivations behind his suicide in 1960. Obviously it suits Day's narrative to claim that the original Alice was in the same room as the original Peter Pan, but at what point does spreading easily-corrected misinformation that led to a human being's suicide become morally not-okay?Mean girl tone: A lot of this book, especially the final chapter, comes across as a character assassination of Lewis Carroll. To advance his not-entirely-fair narrative, Day describes Carroll's behavior after being excommunicated from the Liddell clan as "like a jilted lover"; well, maybe - why not tell his readers which facts he's referring to and let us draw conclusions ourselves, rather than simply stating his conclusion, withholding the facts on which those conclusions are based, and tacitly insisting that we take his conclusions on trust? (After 300 pages of showing himself to be at least sporadically untrustworthy.) Day accuses Dodgson of hypocrisy for chasing celebrities, then bridling after he became famous himself and was approached by fans - but anyone who's read a single book on Dodgson knows his objection was not to celebrity-seekers, but to anyone who insisted on identifying him as Lewis Carroll after he had gone to extreme lengths to keep his pseudonym private (Google J.K. Rowling/Robert Galbraith to learn how profound a betrayal this can be). One could easily make a case that Carroll ultimately became ingracious in his political disputes with Dean Liddell, but Day's suggestion that Carroll was profoundly immoral simply for disagreeing with his powerful boss comes across as grossly unfair - he seems to have mistaken oligarchic authoritarianism for morality.Extremely dubious guesses: Most of Day's apparently-original theories are of this level of quality - he suggests that 'Orange Marmalade' is meant as an anagram for 'Am Analog Dreamer.' I suspect that most readers will find this unpersuasive. The only section of this book I found entirely convincing, though hardly original to Day, is the suggestion that Carroll may have filled his story with reductio ad absurdum situations in imitation of Zeno - this is not a difficult claim to support, as Carroll identified Zeno as his favorite philosopher, wrote a variation of Zeno's race between the Tortoise and Achilles, and explicitly wrote that reductio ad absurdum scenes were his favorite type of story in the introduction to 'Sylvie and Bruno.' Most of the math patterns Day suggests seem wildly far-fetched to me, though I am not a mathematician and perhaps they are simply over my head. Day's single biggest allegorical focus is the descent of the goddess motif, especially Persephone from Greek myth - this is not impossible (Carroll did once compare the Queen of Hearts to a 'blind and aimless Fury'), but I just don't see it. As a lifelong reader of books about Alice, the one idea here that grabbed my attention is the possibility that Carroll may have intended an allegorical parallel between the rose garden of spiritual enlightenment from Cabala (set around a fountain) and the rose garden with 'cool fountains' which Alice spends the first half of the book trying to reach; there's no absolute proof, but we know from his diaries that Carroll attended Masonic events, Freemasonry builds on Cabala, and the connection seems striking.This book is so visually-pleasing that some readers might want it simply as an art object. We know from Carroll's surviving writings that there really are at least a handful of allegorical references to Oxford society and logic in the Alice books, and it's a good bet there are other allegorical bits in the stew. The best possible use of this book would be to whet the readers' appetite to learn more from Alice books which are perhaps a bit more level-headed and authoritative, in particular the fantastic annotated edition by Martin Gardner.
6 of 7 people found the following review helpful. Hidden connections, references, and meanings in Alice in Wonderland in a smart coffee table book By Robert J Stek I have long been a fan of AIW and for years my favorite reference has been the various incarnations of Martin Gardner's Annotated Alice - it is now my second favorite, surpassed by David Day's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland Decoded. In October in NYC the Lewis Carroll Society of North America sponsored a number of events celebrating the 150th anniversary of the publication of Alice. At one of the venues I met David Day and purchased his massive, beautifully illustrated labor of love and scholarship with many new theories about the hidden meanings and implied references contained within AIW and Carroll's conscious/unconscious intentions in writing it. Day draws from multiple sources, especially classical sources so familiar to Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, and proposes multiple connections to themes and characters, some of which have been explored by previous scholars but many new and even controversial. If you think that AIW is just a beloved children's story, purchase this book and be prepared to take your own journey down the rabbit hole to discover a wonderland of new connections and symbolic meanings.
6 of 8 people found the following review helpful. Thank you David Day for all your hard work By Amazon Customer What an adventure, Thank you David Day for all your hard work - I first heard your interview on Australian radio and said I must get that book. Many of us these days lack a REAL education (classical that is) and need this insight to fill in the blanks. Wonderful, Amazing!
See all 12 customer reviews... Alice's Adventures in Wonderland Decoded: The Full Text of Lewis Carroll's Novel with its Many Hidden Meanings RevealedBy David Day
No comments:
Post a Comment