Response to speaker

 Our speaker raised the question of how to interpret “Through the Looking Glass”, when it is appropriate to use other texts to “read” the work. She gave an example of Dodgson's (Carrol's) exploration of the concept of death as nothingness, “blinking out of existence.” The fact that the author seems to have contemplated this kind of death despite his religion and persona may be reason enough to step back from the task of guessing at authorial intention. and invoke the “Death of the Author” (fittingly enough) to say that “Through the Looking Glass” is “written each time it is read, seen through the lens of the reader's experience. Dodgson was not fully aware of the implications and subtexts of his work, as finely tuned and crafted as it may be. The subconscious ideas humming under the surface level of his thoughts invariably breaks through. I think it makes sense, and is certainly important for historical accuracy, to read “Through the Looking Glass” through the lens of prior works and the cultural context in which Dodgson lived, but I also think it makes sense to read it through the lens of works that have come since, and the lenses of myriad cultural contexts, and go at it with everything that exists in our “frame” of identity and experience. This is a daunting and vague sounding task, but when I really read a work, I can only truly read it with my eyes, no matter how diligently I try to remove myself and step out of my frame to see through another lens, The preceding post has some examples of modern interpretations of, and distant cousins to the Alice stories that have colored my reading of them.