Graduation Year
2009
Document Type
Thesis
Degree
M.A.
Degree Granting Department
English
Major Professor
Nancy Tyson, Ph.D.
Keywords
Portraits, Creativity, Incubation, Preparation, Insight
Abstract
Lewis Carroll's novels Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass and What Alice Found There share many characteristics with the author's photographs. Both Carroll's portraits and literature utilize dreamlike imagery to move beyond the present time and space into a dream world. The similar imagery demonstrates an important creative link between Carroll's novels and photographs. The creation of Carroll's masterpiece, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and its sequel, Through the Looking Glass and What Alice Found There, creatively depended on the photographic images Carroll produced. Utilizing the four step process of creativity generally accepted by psychologists, Carroll's photographs are examined alongside his texts. In doing so, modern readers of Carroll's novels can glimpse the creative process that produced Wonderland. To argue the creative relationship between Carroll's photography and literature, R. Keith Sawyer's 2006 text, Explaining Creativity: The Science of Human Innovation is employed. Sawyer describes creativity as a four step process: preparation, incubation, insight, and verification. Using these fours steps as reference points, passages from Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass and What Alice Found There are examined alongside Carroll's photographs in order to demonstrate the creative importance of photography to the creation of the Alice novels.
Scholar Commons Citation
Mahoney, Bridget, "Photography's creative influence on Lewis Carroll's Alice's adventures in Wonderland and Through the looking glass and what Alice found there" (2009). USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations.
https://digitalcommons.usf.edu/etd/2079
