A wonderful carnival: An analysis of Lewis Carroll's Alice books as carnivalized Menippean satires

This study has analyzed Lewis Carroll's two Alice books, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (1865) and Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There (1871) from the standpoint of Menippean tradition and Mikhail Bakhtin's carnival theory. Both Menippean satires and carnival spirit propose a subversive upending of existing social order. The Alice books use Menippean genre characteristics to disrupt established literary traditions while carnival acts and images in the books revert the cultural and social structures of Victorian England. Carroll achieves these reversals through subversive, yet humorous carnivalesque practices such as decrownings, parodies, and employment of grotesque imagery. Menippean adventure plot and the dream frame aid in the creation of carnivalesque worlds that offer an alternative to the authoritative Victorian world order. Carroll utilizes these traditions to humorously parody Victorian ideas of propriety and etiquette, as well as Victorian education. At the end of each adventure, Alice rejects the authority figures of these alternate worlds and undergoes mental maturation in the process. Taking the Menippean qualities and carnivalesque acts and imagery in these works into consideration, the study concludes that Alice books are Menippean satires that are infused with carnival spirit.