CARROLLIAN PORTALS AND THE SEMIOTICS OF TRANSITION: Alice's Fantastic Crossings in Lewis Carroll's Works
Alice; Lewis Carroll; Semiotics; Crossings; Portals.
This ongoing doctoral dissertation examines Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass (2013 edition), with a focus on the role of portals and the processes of passage enacted by Alice in both narratives. The study departs from the notion of threshold (Campbell, 2007), the fantasy portal (Mendlesohn, 2008), deterritorialization (Deleuze & Guattari, 1997), and the non-place (Augé, 1994). Its aim is to compare the two works in their fictional representations of fantastic portals, highlighting similarities and differences in the choice of objects that condition both the narrative development and Alice’s transitional experience. The dissertation draws on the critical framework of Comparative Literature, particularly thematology (Brunel et al., 2012; Coutinho, 2011; Carvalhal, 2011), while also engaging with theories of the fantastic (Todorov, 1970; Bachelard, 1997; Roas, 2014) in the Hispanic tradition, and British perspectives on fantasy and sub-creation (Tolkien, 2012). The analysis is further grounded in semiotics (Peirce, 2005; Santaella, 2002, 2017; Pignatari, 2004), applied to the signs of passage represented by the “rabbit hole” and the “mirror” through Peirce’s triad of icon, index, and symbol. With regard to the dreamlike dimension of Carroll’s texts, the study incorporates Freud’s (2019) and Lacan’s (1986) theories of the unconscious, language, and signification. Still in progress, the research is expected, upon completion, to provide a semiotic reading of the portal-sign, articulating the elements that substantiate the events of transition and transformation in Alice’s journey through fantastic thresholds.