In Shane Leslie’s Lewis Carroll and the Oxford Movement (1933), I found a mapping from people and animals in Through the Looking-Glass to real persons and other objects (like Tweedledum -> High Church and Tweedledee -> Low Church). I didn’t feel too comfortable with some of the associations, because I tried something like that for The Hunting of the Snark in 2013 and was not sufficiently sure whether my assumptions made sense. Nevertheless, I show you on this page what I thought some years ago.
The text (2013) below is a copy from my ipernity.com account.
If you want to be on the safe side, then claim that The Hunting of the Snark is complete nonsense. That claim is cool and difficult to reject.
But the nonsense may be not that complete: Snark Matrix
In the table,
Bellman, Boots, Baker, Butcher, Beaver, Banker, Barrister, Bonnetmaker, Broker, Billard marker, Hope, Care, Snark and Boojum
are associated with
Charles Darwin, Thomas Cranmer, St. Corbinian, The Bard, George Liddell, Benjamin Jowett, Henry Holiday, God (not to be depicted by the illustrator), Father Time (allegory), Religion (allegory), Liberty (allegory).
Further associations:
– 42 boxes: 42 Articles of the Anglican Church
– Baker’s 7 coats: 7 sacraments [update: Thomas Cranmer’s 6+1 recantations]
– Baker’s 3 pairs of boots: Trinity
– Jubjub: a clock, a chronometer, or time in general
– Breakfast at five-o’clock tea; breakfast at location with ca. OxfordTime+8
– Bathing machines: Dr. James Gully’s water cure (Darwin) [update: temporary belfry at Oxford CCC]
– Lace making; dissection, vivisection (used by Darwin)
– Forks: tuning forks (Darwins experiments with spiders)
CLD’s contemporaries in Henry Holiday’s Snark illustrations?:
– Charles Darwin and the Banker
– Charles Darwin and the Bellman
– Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (Lewis Carroll) on the rocks
– Henry Holiday and the maker of Bonnets and Hoods
– Benjamin Jowett and the Butcher
– Henry George Liddell and the Billiard-marker
2013-10-11, 2015-02-15 (academia.edu -> snrk.de), update: 2022-10-18