Introduction

Abstract

In Lewis Carroll’s novel Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, Alice is lazing in the grass on a warm summer’s day when she sees a White Rabbit hurrying past, wearing a waistcoat and consulting his pocket watch. Intrigued, she follows the rabbit and falls down a long burrow. She finds herself in a strange and surreal place called Wonderland, where she encounters mysterious talking animals (including a hookah-smoking caterpillar), magical food, and a delusional royal court. One of the stranger creatures Alice encounters during her adventures is the grinning Cheshire cat that can appear and disappear at will, leaving only its smile behind. On the cat’s advice, Alice visits the March Hare, who spends his days at a never-ending tea party with a Dormouse and a Mad Hatter. Eventually, she meets the Queen of Hearts, the mad tyrant who rules Wonderland. At the end of the story, the Knave of Hearts (one of the Queen of Hearts’ guards) is charged with stealing some tarts. A trial is held and Alice is called as a witness. She ridicules the trial and the furious Queen orders “Off with her head!” Alice dismisses the entire court as “nothing but a pack of cards” and wakes up to realise she has been dreaming.

The rabbit hole went straight on like a tunnel for some way, and then dipped suddenly down, so suddenly that Alice had not a moment to think about stopping herself before she found herself falling down a very deep well. Either the well was very deep, or she fell very slowly, for she had plenty of time as she went down to look about her and to wonder what was going to happen next.

—Lewis Carroll

A philosopher is a blind man in a dark room looking for a black cat that isn’t there. A theologian is the man who finds it.

—Unattributed. Collected by H. L. Mencken (1942)