Why is Alice's Adventures in Wonderland so famous?

Katia Kiss
14 de mar. de 2018
2 min de leitura

Alice in Wonderland Book Scarf - by Enjoy the Traffic

In the Victorian era, children’s books often contained moral lessons. But Lewis Carroll, who was a mathematics and logic professor in Oxford, wanted to create a novel about a fantastical world – and he did! His heroine, Alice, is not like other heroines of the era. She talks back, she is reckless, she’s pert. That made her very different from the other characters of the Victorian era who were supposed to give lessons to the children. Carroll initially titled his book “Alice’s Adventures Underground,” but he thought that sounded a bit didactic he wanted it to be more fun, so it become “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.”

“Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland” has never gone out of print, which makes it absolutely remarkable. It is not that long, about 28,000 words. It has been translated in innumerous languages. “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland” is among the most translated books from English. It has been translated in Esperanto and there is an artist in London who was inspired to create his own emoji Alice. There is an Alice in Brazilian sign language, one in Mongolian, in Slovak, and many others. “Alice’s Adventure in Wonderland” is a real challenge for translators because it has so much made-up material in it. There’s a Mad Hatter, there’s a Dormouse, there’s a crazy tea party where nobody actually has tea or eats anything. And translators have to work on, not just the puns, but also homophones. A mouse talks about his tale and Alice thinks he’s talking about his real tail but he’s talking about a story. These are real challenges in English, for an English reader, can you imagine translate all these to French or German? Carroll himself wrote to his publisher and said, I think the book is untranslatable. That said, he did want it to go around the world. “Alice’s Adventure in Wonderland” is truly remarkable work, and speaks to the universal love of this tale.