![cheshire cat smile cheshire cat smile](https://images.fineartamerica.com/images/artworkimages/mediumlarge/3/smiling-cheshire-cat-with-gold-tooth-jeff-poplar.jpg)
Much absurd humour is derived from this sort of interdisciplinary wordplay.
#CHESHIRE CAT SMILE TRIAL#
So when Alice confronts the Queen and challenges her authority (“You’re nothing but a pack of cards!”), the trial literally collapses like a house of cards, and Alice’s dream ends. And in any system of logic or mathematics, contradicting the axioms (or rules) leads to chaos and collapse. This formal system also requires the Queen’s ruthless application of axes, by which Carroll really means axioms. In the final chapter, during the trial of the Knave of Hearts, Alice objects to the Queen’s system of “sentence first, verdict afterwards.” Unknowingly, Alice has entered into an argument that employs the formal mathematical language of sentential calculus (today known as propositional calculus), in which, as the Queen says, the sentence (or formula) must be complete before any valid verdict (or conclusion) can be reached. At the tea party in Wonderland, for instance, Alice is bewildered by the bizarre wordplay of the mad Hatter and the March Hare: “The Hatter’s remark seemed to have no sort of meaning in it, and yet it was certainly English.” She recognizes that the pair is speaking in logically structured sentences, but is also correct in concluding that their conversation has no discernible meaning-or perhaps no more meaning than an algebraic expression has in ordinary speech.
![cheshire cat smile cheshire cat smile](https://youngpossumsblog.files.wordpress.com/2010/03/cheshire-cat-smile.jpg)
The trick is in finding the right dictionary. In Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There, the Red Queen explains exactly this: “You may call it ‘nonsense’ if you like,” she says, “but I’ve heard nonsense, compared with which that would be as sensible as a dictionary!” They might make sense from the perspective of a philosopher or a mathematician, say, but they sound preposterous when used in ordinary speech. Many of the characters use everyday words that have entirely different, formal meanings within the contexts of various academic disciplines. The Duchess’s response is typical of the non-answers Alice is given during her stay in Wonderland, yet the exchange suggests there’s a riddle to be solved nonetheless.ĭ ecoding Carroll’s fairy-tale world is difficult, because each apparently rational insight into its nature is contradicted by the revelations of subsequent analyses-revelations often found within the specialized language Wonderland’s inhabitants employ. “It’s a Cheshire cat,” said the Duchess, “and that’s why. “Please would you tell me,” said Alice . . . “why your cat grins like that? ” The expression “to grin like a Cheshire cat” predates Carroll by more than a century, but its origins are obscure, which the author alludes to in an exchange between Alice and the Duchess: Take, for instance, the character’s peculiar smile, which has inspired as much speculation as that of the Mona Lisa. As well as Carroll’s patron, Pusey served as a canon at Christ Church, whose coat of arms is emblazoned with four leopard’s heads, and whose students referred to the canons as the Ch. Alice rather formally addresses the cat as Cheshire Puss, undoubtedly a reference to Edward Bouverie Pusey. The list goes on-Carroll’s caricatures comprise a veritable who’s who of nineteenth-century Britain-but Wonderland’s most iconic creature, the Cheshire Cat, has proven more elusive than the rest. The art critic and historian John Ruskin, Alice’s drawing instructor, is represented by the old Conger Eel once a week, the character teaches drawling, stretching, and fainting in coils, just as his counterpart taught drawing, sketching, and painting in oils. Family physician to the Liddells (and Queen Victoria), he constantly checked his pocket watch and adjusted his spectacles as he hurried from one appointment to the next. Non-avian avatars include the White Rabbit, a surrogate for Henry Wentworth Acland. Two birds, the Eaglet and the Lory, stand in for Alice’s sisters, Edith and Lorina, while the Dodo serves as a caricature of Carroll himself the author, who spoke with a mild stammer, was often heard to introduce himself as Mr. He always acknowledged that Wonderland’s real-life protagonist was Alice Liddell, daughter of the dean of his college, Christ Church. Lewis Carroll was the pseudonym of Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, an Oxford mathematician, logician, clergyman, and photographer.