In this seminar we will explore the relationship between literary language and logic in the work of Lewis Carroll and James Joyce. Carroll, whose real name was Charles Dodgson, was a Mathematics Lecturer at Christ Church, Oxford, where he published numerous logical and mathematical works, including Symbolic Logic. Beginning with Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass, we will trace the development of Carroll’s literary logic from the portmanteau words of “Jabberwocky” to “The Hunting of the Snark.” Although Joyce didn’t read these works until the 1920s, he drew on Carroll extensively for his final work, Finnegans Wake, which can be seen as the logical conclusion of Carroll’s linguistic experiments. Studying excerpts from A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Ulysses and Finnegans Wake, we will consider Joyce’s linguistic innovation in relation to both Lewis Carroll and early twentieth century logic.
- Teacher: Sangam MacDuff