Making Sense of Nonsense: An Examination of Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Norton Juster's The Phantom Tollbooth as Allegories of Children's Learning
Hailed as pre-eminent works of nonsense fantasy, Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (1865) and Norton Juster's The Phantom Tollbooth (1961) quickly became and so remain landmarks of children's literature. As their respective protagonists, Alice and Milo, wander through unfamiliar and illogical other-worlds and find their knowledge continually exercised, confused and contradicted, both works effectively function as allegories of children's learning. Representative of two "golden moments" in children's literature, Alice and Tollbooth employ nonsense and word play to acknowledge children's experiences and struggles with tedium, educational methods, language, mathematics, manners, justice and their own processes of individuation.
History
Journal
The Looking Glass : New Perspectives on Children's Literature
ISSN
1551-5680
Volume
9
Issue
1
Publisher
La Trobe University
Section Title
Emerging Voices
Author Biography
Maryn Brown is currently completing a Master of Arts in Children's Literature degree through the School of Library Archival and Information Studies at the University of British Columbia.
Date Created
2008-12-15
Rights Statement
Essays and articles published in The Looking Glass may be reproduced for non-profit use by any educational or public institution; letters to the editor and on-site comments made by our readers may not be used without the expressed permission of that individual. Any commercial use of this journal, in whole or in part, by any means, is prohibited. Authors of accepted articles assign to The Looking Glass the right to publish and distribute their text electronically and to archive and make it permanently available electronically. They retain the copyright and, 90 days after initial publication, may republish it in any form they wish as long as The Looking Glass is acknowledged as the original source.
Data source
OJS data migration 2025: https://ojs.latrobe.edu.au/ojs/index.php/tlg/article/view/122
