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Post by peterws on Jun 13, 2008 18:03:43 GMT -5
Bettyboop, have you actually READ Karoline's book? To me it was/is enormously valuable in redirecting and indeed stimulating research. So many previous books about Carroll simply relied on previous books about Carroll: thus was the "authorised version" established, without new research, without asking hard questions, without understanding the times in which Carroll lived. Karoline introduced some scepticism - and as an iconoclast she was sometimes reviled, though in my view she (and others, like Lebailly) revitalised Carroll studies and we are much in her debt (which is not to say that her theories are beyond challenge). It is perfectly legitimate to label the orthodox view as "The Myth": existing "scholarship" was lazy, complacent, and vastly too respectful of "authority". To sneer at a brave attempt to question the paradigm does a disservice to Karoline. GO READ THE BOOK!
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Post by sadiranson on Jul 4, 2008 13:04:04 GMT -5
The Carroll Myth has a lot to do with deliberate misinformation by so many biographers and the fact that many of Carroll's original documents were destroyed - rather unceremoniously - immediately following his death and in the years that followed. His diaries were kept private and even after publication by the Lewis Carroll Society UK there is information in the published diaries that is still kept rather "hushed" and which I am writing about for my new book now.... All of these theories about Carroll as pedophile, Carroll as split-personality, Carroll as drug-user, Carroll as sufferer of Aspergers (a contemporary read and a backward glance at best, for there is nothing to support this theory, not in the Diaries anyway, so we look backward and say this). What we CAN say is that Carroll was diagnosed with a condition that should, I think, bring a new understanding to his work and his life, and I'm writing about that now... and i feel strongly that this is important. I think too that his photography has really fed the myth, so to speak. It has been so largely misunderstood that it's really astounding to me. After all, the Victorian Cult of the Child (a great book if you haven't read it) shows us that Victorians liked to dress up nude children with halos and fairy wings to project such Purity and Innocence and no doubt, to them, this WAS innocent, tho with a backward glance it looks rather perverse and we would NOT accept this today, but again, it's all context. To see examples of this, look at the work of Rejlander or Cameron, for starters. Carroll tho - he was different, and to my mind, far less perverse if anything for he did few nudes and didn't dress his nudes up as fairies and sprites etc.... The MAJORITY of Carroll's work shows children fully clothed or in their nightdress etc. and for whatever reason, he has been stuck with the awful pedophile label - and i think this is because his children are MORE threatening to us as adults in some way. Carroll had a gift for capturing what the child was projecting, instead of Rejlander and Cameron's trick of using the child to prject what they wanted, etc.... So Carroll caught children as they indeed are - which is somewhat precocious, savage, truer to true nature, and somewhat wild... one can only get from the sitter what the sitter is projecting, after all, and I htink we look at Alice as Beggar Maid and find that slightly threatening - but again, that look is in HER eye, not in Carroll's - he just captured it... So, back to the myth - neither is correct: Saint Carroll nor Carroll as pedophile. I think he likely was celibate (we have nothing to suggest otherwise, no real affairs and etc.) and he would not have jeopardized his rather comfortable life at Christ Church where he lived for most of his life... until he died, in fact... . He DID enjoy teh company of rather adult girls, however, and certainly girls who at that time were "of age" and he sometimes took them with him to his seaside retreat at Eastbourne and i think this is of some speculation. In the final account, to my mind, he was wholly human and perhaps that's just too much for many biographers to accept - It's certain possible and likely that he had some sexual thought, but again, there is plenty to conclude that Carroll was "hypo-sexual" (less sexual) than most people - i think that's rather clear - to me it is. But I don't think he had NO feelings at all, but again, I think these were projected onto older girls, certainly not "children". His often reported "dislike" of boys is really not true - I think he preferred girls - yes - but his jokes about boys are just that - rather tongue in cheek. He certainly saw beauty in some boys - to wit, the Liddell boy as well as Tennyson's son, Hallam (i think it's two "ls" but i can't remember now... Anyway= just a few thoughts. Hope they help in some way.... if not, sorry! Am trying! Will let you know when my book comes out and maybe that will shed some new light as well - let's hope so! For now, i think Contrariwise is a good place to start for "newer" ideas about Carroll.... Sadi Ranson-Polizzotti www.tantmieux.squarespace.com
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Post by karoline on Jul 24, 2008 10:56:32 GMT -5
So, back to the myth - neither is correct: Saint Carroll nor Carroll as pedophile. I think he likely was celibate (we have nothing to suggest otherwise, no real affairs and etc.) Nothing 'to suggest otherwise?' I agree with so much that you say, but really here you seem to be retreating into the myth. Remember, Dodgson's own nephew acknowledged an unhappy love affair he did not wish to 'lift the veil' on. The fact that subsequent biographers all but ignored this, together with the anguished love poetry, the prayers to God in which he describes himself as vile and sinful, and the autobiographical fiction that deals with broken hearts and frustrated love, shouldn't encourage us to ignore it all too. Sadi, you're part of an important ongoing bid to rescue the guy's complexity and reality from oblivion, and I applaud everything you are doing. But a vital part of that complexity is his existence as a fully adult man with an adult man's sexual needs and experiences. It has always been his adult sexuality that has been most entirely overwritten, disregarded and disrespected by the myth. We need to rescue that aspect of the man as much, if not more than, any other, if we are to do him real and honest justice.
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Post by ackerman on Jul 24, 2008 13:46:36 GMT -5
The post by peterws (post Jun 13, 2008, 6:03pm on topic: "What is the 'Myth'?") is absolutely right-on!! It was Dreamchild that spurred me on to finish my own book. I had Behind the Looking Glass ( www.lewiscarrollmyth.com ) in the works for, literally, years. As I wrote, I felt, though, like a voice crying in the wilderness. Since my research demonstrated Carroll's alternative spiritual/philosophical position...which has never once been sufficiently addressed by the mainstream Carrollian biographical paradigm...I felt like I was swimming against the tide. When I read Dreamchild and learned about Karoline's ground-breaking efforts to de-construct "the myth" that had grown up around so many aspects of Carroll's persona, I moved forward with publication of my book, as I felt that the soil had been tilled enough for new seedlings to sprout. My book goes a step further...I purport that Carroll, contrary to "the myth" of having "written Alice on a lazy Sunday afternoon for the entertainment of the Liddell children", actually deliberately and calculatedly wrote Alice and Looking Glass as philosophical allegories (not that different than Plato's Allegory of the Cave), in which he was able to simultaneously "hide and express" the theosophical/gnostic views that were underlying so many of his otherwise seemingly eccentric behaviors. I contend that understanding these hiterto unexamined aspects of Carroll's philosophical perspectives facilitates deeper insight into many other "curiosities" of his biography. As an academic I am committed to intellectual freedom and curiosity. Interdisciplinarity shines strong light on a subject. Questioning paradigms is essential to evolving views and deeper inquiries. Truth is a moving target...we can't stand still. Sherry L. Ackerman www.sherryackerman.com
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Post by johntufail on Jul 24, 2008 17:06:14 GMT -5
Hi Sherry,
I have to say that I agree with you. I think it is tragic that people whose views I otherwise respect, fail to see the groundbraking nature of Karoline's book. I was a particularly critical reader of her book (as Karoline knows) as I had been 'warned off it' before reading it! Neither do I support Karoline's major premise (Though I both respect it and admit there is little, if any ;factual' basis for rejecting it out of hand).
What I will say is that I doubt Karoline would have got a publisher for her radical re-interpretation without the 'Sex/Scandal' element. I think this is what her critics resent. Personally I think they are directin their ire against the wrong target. It's publisher's they should be railing against! I say, thank goodness Karoline came up with an hypothesis that was both genuinely held and fitted into the publisher's requirements.
A long aside. With regards to Karoline's research and presentation. I paid particular attention to this is in some areas she was covering areas I had already covered. I found it virtually flawless. Nor, I must add, have any of her critics, to my knowledge, been able to challenge her in this respect. One Notable critic has often claimed to have refutation of one (to me minor) element of Karoline's research, but even he has conspicuously failed to produce the goods.
Please note, that I am not saying I agree with Karoline in her interpretation of facts and circumstances, I don't (she has not convinced me). But that is what knowledge is about it is about challenging. it is about debate.
What I do know is that Karoline's critics (and there have been many) have conspicuously failed to refute her research. Instead they have revealed their feet of clay by resorting to distortion, misrepresentation and even downright vindictiveness in their attempts to mute her message.
Regards
JT
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Post by mikeindex on Jul 28, 2008 9:25:23 GMT -5
John, thank you for an admirable summary. Just one thing though: the Mrs Liddell business is NOT - and I'm sure Karoline would agree - the 'major premise' of her research! (That was what you meant, wasn't it?)
In fact a new, revised edition of Karoline's book will be on the shelves in September or October, featuring a more detailed analysis of the evolution of the myth, and reducing the evidence for the Mrs L affair to a much briefer summary - precisely because of the over-emphasis laid on this area of Karoline's research by so many commentators.
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Post by johntufail on Jul 28, 2008 15:23:19 GMT -5
Hi Mike,
I suspect it was, mainly i think for the reasons you mention (and the publicity blurb that accompanied the book on its release). I'm delighted that there is to be a new edition coming out - though I'd have preferred a quite different book. Titled, perhaps, Lewis Caroll; The Myth Wars', in which the whole paradigm shift in Carroll studies could be examined. However, maybe Karoline is not quite the right person to write this! Funnily enough I know just the person - but her editor's a bit of a P****!
Regards
JT
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Post by ackerman on Jul 29, 2008 0:15:47 GMT -5
There is currently a lot of interest in “the Carroll Myth”. The Association for New Carroll Studies, for example, claims that the current image of Lewis Carroll was built on a handful of influential books that emerged in the century following his death. The Association is not so much saying that these biographies are inherently wrong as they are claiming that they are incomplete. They treat Carroll superficially, with almost exclusive emphasis on conventionality. It is as if Carroll is “Ozzie” in the old “Ozzie and Harriet” series, without any real attention to the more subtle nuances…the subjective elements…that made him whole. In a Heideggerian sense, there hasn’t been a sufficient search for the authentic Carroll. Perhaps Carroll was the target for myth-making because, at a deeper level, he himself is mythic. The one constant pertaining to mythic characters is that their life stories transcend objectivity. Whether we take as our example Dionysus, Persephone…or Lewis Carroll…the fact remains that historical impressions are dominated by subjective claims to truth. The prevailing biographies of Carroll conspicuously lack consensus in their attempts to construct an objective biographical persona. The essence of myth is exemplified in these conflicting accounts. Myth doesn’t exist objectively apart from the myth-makers and, as such, represents a subjective relationship between the story teller and an archetype. It’s important to remember that the term “myth”, used philosophically, does not mean “something that is not true”. It refers, more accurately, to a consensual reality…something that has been agreed upon by a collective of persons or a confluence of social conditions. We might even say that a “myth” is a shared dream. This being so, it is only natural that myths give way to new research, information and, to some degree, new “shared dreams”. Myths are de-constructed, re-constructed and, then, de-constructed again, as consciousness evolves. The myth was as essential to Lewis Carroll as it was to Plato. In appealing to the dream-world consciousness of their readers by brilliant literary representations of its natural products, both of these myth-makers appealed to an experience that was more solid than one might infer from the mere content of the mythology in which they found expression. Plato appealed to that major part of man’s nature that was neither articulate nor logical, but felt, and willed and acted. Carroll appealed to man’s imagination and sense of wonder, requiring his readers to see the world through the fresh, unconditioned eyes of a child. The subjective relationship is so intimate between myths and their makers that it is impossible for a reader to remain isolated in a self-constructed conceptual world. Both Platonic and Carrollian mythology go down to the bedrock of human nature, where man is more at one with Universal Nature—more in her secret, than he is at the level of his cognitive faculties. Not only was Carroll the subject of his biographer’s myth-making, but he was also a myth-maker. His myth-making went in the opposite direction, however, of the myths made about him. The myths he made took his readers deeper into the mystery, presenting them with a “little doorway” into life’s ineffable secrets. Sherry L. Ackerman www.sherryackerman.com
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