Lewis Carroll's 'Alice's Adventures in Wonderland'. Language games and the problem of their translation

Essay from the year 2019 in the subject American Studies - Literature, grade: 1,3, University of Iceland (Faculty of Humanities), course: Transformations of Classical Children's Books, language: English, abstract: Lewis Carroll's 'Alice's Adventures in Wonderland' is one of the great pioneering figures of nonsense fantasy and undoubtedly a classic of Victorian children's and youth literature. To this day, the story fascinates not only young people, but also adult readers. One reason for the long-lasting success is the complexity of Alice, which allows viewing the plot from various perspectives, such as political, philosophical and even logical or physical perspectives. Therefore, it is not surprising that Alice's Adventures in Wonderland after first being published in 1865, has never been out of print (cf. 'What's so wonderful about Alice?'). Another reason for this success of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland is the language used and its humorous effect. The novel is embedded with both obvious and hidden wordplays, neologisms, syllogisms, well-known poems, nursery rhymes of the time and the assumption that word meanings can be chosen arbitrarily.