Lewis Carroll

[Maxie Zeus]

Awesome! Can't go wrong with the original!

[Joe Tully]

I was thinking about posting something about Hatter's avatar too. I am a big fan of Lewis Carroll and the Alice books, and had a copy of Tenniel's drawing of the Mad Tea Party in my room.

For anyone interested in doing some reading on the subject, I highly recommend The Annotated Alice. It goes into a lot of detail on the meaning of things in the Alice books that aren't very obvious, but are pretty interesting (to me anyways).

Needless to say, I was very happy to see that BTAS has a character called The Mad Hatter.

[DR. BELCH]

Joe Tully:
I was thinking about posting something about Hatter's avatar too. I...had a copy of Tenniel's drawing of the Mad Tea Party in my room.

It's also appropriate because Jervis Tetch had a copy of the same drawing on the wall of his lab in B:TAS.

[Leaping Larry Jojo]

Originally posted by Joe Tully
I was thinking about posting something about Hatter's avatar too. I am a big fan of Lewis Carroll and the Alice books, and had a copy of Tenniel's drawing of the Mad Tea Party in my room.

For anyone interested in doing some reading on the subject, I highly recommend The Annotated Alice. It goes into a lot of detail on the meaning of things in the Alice books that aren't very obvious, but are pretty interesting (to me anyways).

Does it help explain how to duplicate the chess game in "Through the Looking Glass?" I tried to understand what he was doing, but I have no idea how to get the board set up to try to act it out for real, with real chess pieces. I mean, I KNOW how to play chess, but I understand that the story puts Alice in the middle of a game, and some pieces have already positioned themselves in other areas, which is what is confusing me. All I know is that Alice starts out as a pawn, and becomes a queen near the end, but the path there is not so clear to me. Carroll says it is possible in his forewords, but he's really brief about it, and I don't catch on very fast.

[Joe Tully]

I have seen a few books that reprinted Lewis Carroll's instructions on how to duplicate the game with your own chess pieces. It is usually listed just before the start of Through The Looking Glass. Towards the end, it stops following the proper rules of chess, and some of the moves are difficult to figure out just by reading the book. In fact, I even used to have a program that would play the game for you on your computer. If I still had it, I'd send it to you. An explanation of the moves is here, just follow the setup shown in the drawing to start with (the pic with just some of the pieces on the board, below the directions)

http://home.iae.nl/users/termaten/netscape/carroll2.htm

and also here, at the last question

http://www.student.kun.nl/l.derooy/i...l?alice11.html

the description Carroll released is here, including page numbers

http://www.student.kun.nl/l.derooy/i...ks/2chess.html

I hope that you are familiar with chess notation. It might help if you set it up yourself. I remember duplicating it myself, and if you aren't familiar with the notation, it can be confusing.

By the way, if you want to see the lost "chapter" from Through The Looking Glass, go to

http://www.student.kun.nl/l.derooy/i...ml?alice4.html

This is for real! Tenniel lost one of his eyes while fencing, the little nub on the end of his opponent's sword came off and the sword got him in the eye, so some think that's why he thought that part should be deleted. It wasn't supposed to be a whole chapter though, just the end of the White Knight's chapter. I read this originally in "More Annotated Alice" which had some new notes added to "Annotated Alice" but I think it left out some of the original notes for some reason.

Okay, now, back on topic....

Uh...I really like MY avatar! It's great!

[Calhoun07]

Getting a tad off topic here, aren't we? 8^)

[Joe Tully]

No, I talked about avatars in the last line, see?

Seriously though, sorry I got off on a tangent there, hopefully it will end there.

[Leaping Larry Jojo]

I think I'd better print a copy of the instructions and set it up myself one day when I get some time. These notations are not something I'm very familiar with--it's been a long time since I've come across them.

[Maxie Zeus]

Originally posted by calhoun07
Getting a tad off topic here, aren't we? 8^)

This is a cool topic, so rather than squash it I'm going to pull it out into its own thread.

Speaking of the "lost" chapter, I thought I read that it was cut because Carroll felt it didn't add anything to the White Knight chapter, and only delayed Alice's move into the Queen's Square.

[Joe Tully]

Carroll asked Tenniel (the illustrator) if he thought that there were any parts that could be taken out because Carroll felt that the book was too long, and Tenniel suggested Wasp in a Wig. Part of the problem with that part was that Carroll wanted to have only so many chapters in the book, and so incorporated the Wasp into the White Knight chapter, but that made the already long White Knight chapter even longer. The Wasp part was a few pages that didn't really fit in with the White Knight chapter. It wasn't enough to justify its own chapter, nor did it really fit in with that one. The only way in which it fit well was the Wasp was representative of the lower class, while the Knight represented the upper class. In that way, it was an interesting contrast.

Tenniel suggested removal of the Wasp section, and those are all valid reasons to remove the section, but some think that Tenniel was bothered by the single eye comment that Alice made in that section, which could have made him biased against it. She makes some comment "Then, your eyes - they’re too much in front, no doubt. One would have done as well as two, if you must have them so close - "

As the site there says, Tenniel also said that he didn't have any idea how to draw a Wasp in a Wig, and had other work to do rather than try to figure it out.

But I think Carroll did have some notes saying pretty much what you said, Maxie, almost word for word.

[Maxie Zeus]

Thanks for the info, Joe. It's been a long time since I read "Wasp in a Wig" and the history behind it.

[The Mad Hatter]

Hee hee, look what I stirred up! I actually changed to the Carroll avatar as part of retro week... since I can't find my original avatar, I'm _really_ going retro.

I can't add much to the discussion, since, sad to say, it's been WAY too long since I've read his stuff. Looks like I'll have to dig out the books over the weekend...

Have any of you heard of the Carroll walk? It's a path along the Thames River (I think) in Oxford that Carroll and the young girl who originally heard the tales Carroll would turn into the Alice books would walk on a lot, and in fact inspired much of the books. I studied in Oxford one summer, and I got to walk it a few times... it's truly wonderful, because for much of it, you're walking on a narrow strip of land between two bodies of water, and the ground is absolutely lush with plant life. You really do feel like you're in another world when you're walking on it... it sent tingles down my spine.

[Maxie Zeus]

Originally posted by The Mad Hatter
Have any of you heard of the Carroll walk? It's a path along the Thames River (I think) in Oxford that Carroll and the young girl who originally heard the tales Carroll would turn into the Alice books would walk on a lot, and in fact inspired much of the books. I studied in Oxford one summer, and I got to walk it a few times... it's truly wonderful, because for much of it, you're walking on a narrow strip of land between two bodies of water, and the ground is absolutely lush with plant life. You really do feel like you're in another world when you're walking on it... it sent tingles down my spine.

Wow. I haven't heard of this, but it sounds GREAT.

BTW, anyone here ever see "Dream Child," an 80s movie about Alice Liddell and Charles Dodgson? I only saw it once, but remember being really impressed by it.