Framing the Alice's

Yet another response for my Louis Carroll/Alice in Wonderland Class. Snarky snark snark.

Every author has his style, as does every academic and admittedly, some are more pleasing then others. Styles range from pedantic, tedious, and boring to thrilling, exuberant, and irreverent. Sadly, "Framing the Alices” by William A. Madden is much more the former, trying to approach a body of works that is drastically nearer the latter. It is almost tragic that an author so revered for his gaiety and layers of meaning is being subject to the hermeneutic onslaught of someone so lacking in creative spark or even the gift of elegant metaphor.

In the world of academia, many topics are soporific. It is the task of the intellectual to wade through the uninteresting, irrelevant, and inconsequential to reach the islands of stimulating research and joyful understanding. William A. Madden saw the island, but was too distracted by his own posterings and accidentally slipped into a deep muddy pit. While there is some joy in scholastic knowledge for the sheer joy of it in itself, it is hard to focus a message when it lacks readable turn of phrase and is crusty with it is own pedantic ooze.

Madden's aim is to account for the literary import of the poems that frame the Alice works. In his opinion, these bits have not been fully exploited as of yet and he hopes to gleam some intellectual nuggets from their unexplored depths. Firstly, Madden claims to be looking for a cohesive explanation for said poems that does not shore up theories that point to Dodgeson/Carroll's neurosis. Yet, by his stretching and grabbing for interpretations that seem, well over reaching, he seems to fall prey to the same neurosis that plagued Carroll. To quote some ridiculousness:

Thus the wreath embodies the three dimensions of linear time: a reminder of the meaning and identity that derive from memory's link with the past, a token of love that redeems the present and gives it value, and an emblem of an artwork with the power endlessly to renew a timeless present in which it is always next time.

Even out of context, this seems to be stretching it. An item that is mentioned once towards the end of the prefatory poem of Alice in Wonderland? One can take a glancing look at the field of literary criticism that has sprouting from the fertile ground of Carroll’s works and easily see that issues of time abound. Nevertheless, to wrap this nuanced discussion entirely into one brief mentioning? I think not.

I am in no way attempting to slight the findings of Madden, or show disdain for intellectualism at a whole. However, I do decry unwarranted exaggerations of focus. While it seems that Madden has discovered and pointed to some interesting things in Carroll’s framing poems, he pushed it too far. Do they act as frames, as he suggests? Yes. Do they help set the tones of the various interlocking sections? Yes. Do they provide convenient transitions? Yes. Is there unexplored intellectual territory there? Yes, but, “the Wonderland dream tale becomes, in this context, a reminder of the reader of both the need and the possibility of transcending the debilitating decorum of ordinary existence through a renewal of perception that is the central effect of Wonderland itself when the reader fully experiences it.” Again, I think not. Is one really to believe that readers were not able to gain the fully Alice experience before the benevolent Madden came along with his brilliant insight? Still, I think not.

Moreover, it seems to me that this is a problem that plagues the academic world: being able to nurture relevant interpretation and critical commentary and weeding out the crap. As a reader, I may have missed some of the gems that Madden so laboriously worked to free from the mire. Why? Because of his over-falutin’ aim and his lack of readable prose. When you say things like, “[the poems] show the seeds of spiritual death to be latent even in the innocent Alice, ” I have trouble reading the rest of the treatise with a straight face. Madden does prove his most basic claim: that there is unexplored, unappreciated territory in the framing poems, (not that anyone was anywhere close to calling the end to interpretative work on the Alice books) but the style and outlandish quality of the way he does it makes the reader not care. If you are interested in wading into this literary pond, I suggest reading the poems and applying your own intellect, not getting your mental waders covered in unnecessary Madden-colored mud.