Parody and Intertextuality

The book systematically rewrites familiar hymns and didactic verses, replacing moral instruction with linguistic play. Domestic and institutional scenes mock genres—schoolbook, sermon, dance manual, legal transcript. Annotated scholarship documents Carroll’s targets and methods, linking his nonsense to a critique of cultural authority. Parody becomes the engine of both humor and argument.

Central Question

How does Carroll’s parody of schoolroom verse and institutional genres move Alice from rote recitation to critical, experiment-based judgment?

Quick Facts

Work
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland
Related Characters
0
Key Manifestations
4

Theme Analysis

Overview: Parody as Inquiry

Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland turns the Victorian culture of recitation and rule into a field for experiments. Carroll repeatedly rewrites familiar texts—Isaac Watts’s industrious bee becomes a smiling predator in “How doth the little crocodile”; Robert Southey’s moral dialogue returns as the spry defiance of “You are old, Father William.” These distortions do more than amuse: they expose how mnemonic piety can detach from sense. In domestic and civic scenes alike, Carroll mimics authoritative forms—the Duchess’s lullaby, the Hatter’s tea etiquette, the court transcript—while swapping moral content for linguistic games and procedural tics. Alice tests these forms against lived reality. When the Caterpillar demands a recitation, she hears her own verses shift and begins to doubt the premise that correct wording guarantees truth. By the trial, she challenges procedure itself, calling the court “nothing but a pack of cards.” Parody thus becomes a method: stripping recipes for virtue and justice down to their verbal scaffolding so that Alice can inspect what remains. The book’s humor is the lever that pries authority loose from habit, letting judgment reattach to observation and proportion.

Development: From Misrecitation to Judgment

Parody enters early as a symptom of dislocation: Alice tries to recall Watts’s bee but produces a crocodile whose “shining tail” lures fish, inverting diligence into predation. The joke cuts two ways—her memory buckles, and the moral itself proves flimsy when grammar is intact but value reversed. In “Advice from a Caterpillar,” intertext becomes an examination: prompted to recite, Alice delivers “Father William,” a text that bends pious obedience into comic rebellion. The Caterpillar’s cool scrutiny and the mushroom’s two-sided pedagogy convert failed rote learning into iterative trial—small bites, measured results. Midway, parody targets etiquette and narrative: “Twinkle, twinkle, little bat” at the Mad Tea-Party reduces wonder to a private in-joke while the Hatter’s unanswered riddle and perpetual six o’clock trap conversation in loops. Here genre form—riddle, politeness rule—persists as empty ritual. The Mock Turtle and Gryphon broaden the target to curriculum and dance manual: “Reeling and Writhing,” “Uglification,” the Lobster Quadrille’s solemn instructions. By the trial, Carroll escalates to legal parody: jurors label themselves to remember their names; the King treats a nonsense letter as proof and proposes “sentence first—verdict afterwards.” Having learned to weigh words against circumstances, Alice refuses the premise, names the spectacle, and wakes. The arc moves from misremembered lines to the power to rename forms, relocating authority from inherited text to empirical, proportioned judgment.
Analysis

Intertext and Identity: Memory Under Pressure

Wonderland measures identity not by essence but by the stability of one’s recitations. Alice’s verses warp at key moments—“How doth the little crocodile,” then “Father William”—signaling that memory drilled for obedience cannot anchor the self when context shifts. The Caterpillar’s demand, “Who are you?” makes this explicit: under scrutiny, the borrowed words slide. Yet the same slippage reveals a resource. By hearing how form endures while moral content flips, Alice learns to treat citation as material, not commandment. The mushroom then redefines authority as experiment: adjust, observe, recalibrate. Parody thus stages a crisis in Victorian pedagogy and offers a remedy—replace rote identity with an identity practiced through choice and feedback.

Analysis

Institutional Genres Emptied Out

Carroll’s genre mimicry shows how institutions can operate with intact procedure but absent sense. The caucus-race produces winners by fiat; the Tea-Party preserves etiquette by rotating seats instead of washing cups; the court elevates scribbles and a nonsense letter into “evidence.” The King’s logic—verdict after a letter is read, sentence before verdict—parodies legal formalism unmoored from justice. These scenes don’t simply mock; they diagram how rules, once severed from reasons, generate noise that silences judgment. Alice’s responses evolve accordingly: she exits the Tea-Party rather than solve the Hatter’s riddle; she questions the Mock Turtle’s curriculum without submitting to it; she finally names the cards as cards, collapsing the illusion. Parody becomes an analytic instrument that reveals when social forms drift from their purposes.

Parody Reassigns Authority from Text to Context

By warping hymns and manuals, Carroll isolates verbal scaffolds from moral content. Alice learns that meaning belongs not to inherited lines but to how words match circumstances—the mushroom’s measured bites, the courtroom’s sham evidence, and the Tea-Party’s loops teach her to test before assent.

Character and Symbol Connections

Alice’s shifting recitations prime her critical stance; the Caterpillar engineers the experiment that replaces rote with calibration via the mushroom. The Duchess and Hatter weaponize genre—lullaby and etiquette—as empty noise. The Mock Turtle and Gryphon formalize parody into curriculum and dance. In the court, the King of Hearts embodies procedural parody while the playing cards visualize flat hierarchy. Perpetual-tea-time-and-the-watch marks ritual severed from progress; cheshire-cats-grin models how sign can survive substance, a lesson Alice applies when she names the trial’s spectacle.

Manifestations

Alice’s attempt at Watts becomes “How doth the little crocodile,” flipping industrious virtue into predatory charm and exposing rote moral verse to re

Prompted to recite, Alice produces “You are old, Father William,” replacing obedient piety with comic defiance under the Caterpillar’s exam-like gaze.

“Twinkle, twinkle, little bat” and an unanswered riddle parody parlor recitation and logic, while perpetual six o’clock petrifies etiquette into comp

Mock curriculum—“Reeling and Writhing,” “Uglification”—and a danced instruction manual turn education into performance, inviting Alice’s skeptical que

A nonsense letter is read as proof; jurors label themselves; the King proposes “sentence first—verdict afterwards,” completing the legal parody Alice