1. The Metafictional Evolution of 'Wonderland' Illustration
- Author
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Persohn, Lindsay
- Abstract
In her influential work "Metafiction: The Theory and Practice of Self-Conscious Fiction," Waugh (1984) loosely categorizes literary metafiction on a sliding scale of four metafictional Acts. Through repeated readings of "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland" (Carroll & Tenniel, 1866) and study of all of "Wonderland" editions across time, I noted that artists move the book across Waugh's scale of Acts through the visual narrative of illustration. In the essay that follows, I trace the development of metafiction in "Wonderland" by curating (Persohn, 2018, 2021) a collection of illustrations across time that demonstrates turning points and exemplars of how the book has evolved from the simplest forms of metafiction in Carroll and Tenniel's first edition to radical metafiction in more recent illustrators' works. This evolution evokes ontological questions about the thin distinctions between fiction and reality.
- Published
- 2023
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