The hunting of the snark

THE HUNTING OF THE SNARK

Lewis Carroll represents a link with Shakespeare because both of them use mixed genres.

In his works, Carroll uses COMIC and TRAGIC features.

Within this particular form of poetry, we can find many esthetic categories such as SURREALISM, NONSENSE SATIRE,GROTESQUE

For Lewis Carroll, "language is reality . It does not have fixed and unchangeable rules.

He deconstructs language, lexical and syntactical patterns because he is aware of the fact that reality continually changes and there is not, only one way of view of world but there are a lot.

He is a romantic writer but he goes beyond romanticism. In fact , he is inspired by SURREALISM which attempts to express the workings of the unconscious mind, allowing works to develop non-logically.

Surrealism recommends that the mind should be liberated from logic and reason, so that the results represent the operations of the unconscious.

Reality is a dream, is a part of our imagination.

Carroll's key-word is NONSENSE, which is "the simple sense of wonder at the shapes of things

As he himself pointed out, words can mean much more than a writer intends, they can acquire meanings entirely by accident. Nonsense writing is a peculiarly rich medium for both types of "unintended" meaning.

Carroll belongs to the period in which there was the experimentation of the interrelation between vision art and literature.

Every work of Carroll was illustrated (for example "The hunting of the snark" was illustrated by Holiday).

They were illustrated for "The Punch"; It was a satirical magazine with cartoons, it satirized British society.

Carroll was one of the most famous photographers of childhood. Photography became an art, allowed him to have a good relationship and dialogue with children.

"The hunting of the snark" was dedicated to children.

We know that the Snark describes "with infinite humor the impossible voyage of an improbable crew to find an inconceivable creature".

We can say that the Snark is a poem about being and non-being, an existential poem, a poem of existential agony. The captain Bellman's map is the map that charts the course of humanity; blank because we possess no information about where we are or whither we drift.

The snark is every man's ultimate concern. This is the great search motif of the poem, the quest for an ultimate good. But this motif is submerged in a stronger motif, the dread, the agonizing dread, of ultimate failure.

The Boojum is more than death. It is the end of all searching. It is final, absolute extinction. In a literal sense, Carroll's Boojum means nothing at all. It is the void, the great blank emptiness out of which we miraculously emerged; by which we will ultimately be devoured.

All characters are caricatures, they are satirized. All characters don't have their names but they are characterized by their social role (grotesque).

THIS IS THE PARODY OF THE FEARFULNESS.