Proto-Transmedial Narrative Structures: Lewis Carroll’s A Tangled Tale

Asunción López-Varela Azcárate

doi:10.7358/ijtl-2019-002-lope

Proto-Transmedial Narrative Structures: Lewis Carroll’s A Tangled Tale

Asunción López-Varela Azcárate

Abstract

This paper explores A Tangled Tale, a collection of mathematical puzzles that Charles Ludwick Dodgson serialized in The Monthly Packet between 1880 and 1885. The hybrid narrative patterns that present mathematical questions by means of fictional storytelling are a unique form of scientific knowledge dissemination that anticipates the breakdown of narrative linearity and the emergence of multiform formats present in transmedia. An inquiry into the Rule of Three and infinite regress tie the knots of a tale that highlights crucial insights on the algorithmic foregrounding of the strategies of transmedia design. Such strategies can be seen as the intersection of narrative as well as mathematical expertise that turn the media galaxy into a cosmic affair.

Keywords

complexity paradigms, hybrid narratology, Lewis Carroll, natural and artificial languages, semiotics, Tangled Tale, transmedia

Full Text:

PDF

References

Ball, Philip. 2016. "We May Live in a Computer Program, but It May not Matter". BBC Earth. http://www.bbc.com/earth/story/20160901-we-might-live-in-a-computer-program-but-it-may-not-matter?ocid=fbert

Bateson, Gregory. 1972. Steps to an Ecology of Mind. New York.

Carroll, Lewis. 1989. The Selected Letters of Lewis Carroll, edited by Morton N. Cohen and Roger Lancelyn Green. London: Macmillan.

Carroll, Lewis. 1893. Pillow Problems and A Tangled Tale. Macmillan and Co. Project Gutenberg.

Carroll, Lewis. 1893. Sylvie and Bruno Concluded. Macmillan and Co.

Chatterjee, Ronjaunee. 2015. Literature and Feminine Singularity: 1850-90. Los Angeles: University of California. https://escholarship.org/content/qt26d6v997/qt26d6v997.pdf

Collingwood Dodgson, Stuart. 1898. Life and Letters of Lewis Carroll. London: Fisher Unwin. Project Gutenberg.

Deleuze, Gilles. 1969. The Logic of Sense, translated by Mark Lester and Charles Stivale. New York: Columbia University Press. https://archive.org

Edgerton, Samuel. 1975. Renaissance Rediscovery of Linear Perspective. New York. Basic Books.

Gardner, Martin. 1960. Lewis Carroll, The Annotated Alice. New York: Bramhall House.

Gardner, Martin. 1996. The Universe in a Handkerchief: Lewis Carroll's Mathematical Recreations, Games, Puzzles, and Word Plays. London: Copernicus.

Gillespie, Sam. 2008. The Mathematics of Novelty: Badiou's Minimalist Metaphysics. Melbourne: Re.Press.

Grattan-Guinness, Ivor. 2000. The Search for Mathematical Roots, 1870-1940: Logics, Set Theories and the Foundations of Mathematics from Cantor through Russell to Gödel. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

https://doi.org/10.1515/9781400824045

Hall, Jean. 1991. A Mind That Feeds upon Infinity: The Deep Self in English Romantic Poetry. Rutherford, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press.

Henderson, Andrea. 2009. "Math for Math's Sake: Non-Euclidean Geometry, Aestheticism, and Flatland". PMLA 124: 455-471.

https://doi.org/10.1632/pmla.2009.124.2.455

Hofstadter, Douglas. 1980. Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid. New York: Vintage.

Jenkins, Henry. 2003. "Transmedia Storytelling". MIT Technology Review. https://goo.gl/t3Ieqm

Jenkins, Henry. 2006. Convergence Culture. New York: New York University Press.

Lamb, Evelyn. 2014. "The Math Wars, Lewis Carroll Style". Scientific American Blog: Roots of Unity. http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/roots-of-unity/the-math-wars-lewis-carroll-style/

Landow, George. 2006. Hypertext 3.0: Critical Theory and New Media in an Era of Globalization. Baltimore, MD: John Hopkins University Press.

Law, Graham. 2000. Serializing Fiction in the Victorian Press. New York: Palgrave.

https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230286740

Livio, Mario. 2002. The Golden Ratio: The Story of Phi, The World's Most Astonishing Number. New York: Broadway Books.

López-Varela Azcárate, Asunción. 2019. "Beyond Analogy: The Semiosis of Lewis Carroll's Fantasy Worlds". The Reality and Permanence of Fantasy Fiction: The ESSE Messenger, Journal of the European Society for the Study of English 28 (1): 75-97. http://essenglish.org/messenger/vol-28-1-summer-2019/

Lovett, Charlie. 2005. Lewis Carroll among His Books. Jefferson, NC: McFarland.

Manovich, Lev. 2004. "Database as a Symbolic Form". Semantic Scholar. https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/Lev-Manovich-Database-as-a-Symbolic-Form-the-Logic-Manovich/e230ee0768afd9eec6b7da96520db44b710bbdbb

Rawlins, Gregory J.E. 1992. Compared to What? An Introduction to the Analysis of Algorithms. New York: Computer Science Press.

Rescher, Nicholas. 2010. Infinite Regress: The Theory and History of Varieties of Change. Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers.

Ryan, Marie-Laure. 2004. "Introduction". In Narrative Across Media: The Languages of Storytelling, edited by Marie-Laure Ryan, 1-40. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press.

Stack, Jack. 1986. "Tailpiece Datawocky". English Usage in Southern Africa 17 (1). https://upjournals.co.za/index.php/EUSA/article/view/5225/3093

Stakhov, Alexey. 2008. "The Mathematics of Harmony: Clarifying the Origins and Development of Mathematics". Congressus Numerantium 193: 5-48. http://www.mi.sanu.ac.rs/vismath/stakhov2013new/origins.pdf

Tatarkiewicz. 1980. "Perfection in the Sciences. I. Perfect Numbers". Dialectics and Humanism 7 (2): 1937-1939.

https://doi.org/10.5840/dialecticshumanism19807248

Toffler, Alvin. 1980. The Third Wave: The Classic Study of Tomorrow. New York: Bantam.

Turing, Alan M. 1950. "Computing Machinery and Intelligence". Mind 59 (236): 433-460.

https://doi.org/10.1093/mind/LIX.236.433

Wolf, Werner. 2008. "The Relevance of 'Mediality' and 'Intermediality' to Academic Studies of English Literature". In Mediality/Intermediality, edited by Martin Heusser, Andreas Fischer, and Andreas H. Jucker, 15-43. Göttingen: Narr.

Zeising, Adolf. 1854. Neue Lehre von den Proportionen des menschlichen Korpers. Leipzig: Weigel.

Zeising, Adolf. 1884. Der goldene Schnitt. Halle: Engelmann.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.7358/ijtl-2019-002-lope

International Journal of Transmedia Literacy (IJTL)
Registered by Tribunale di Milano (22/10/2014 n. 328)
Online ISSN 2465-2261 - Print ISSN 2465-227X

Editor in Chief: Matteo Ciastellardi
Managing Editor: Giovanna Di Rosario
Managing Committee: Matteo Andreozzi, Stefano Calzati, Ugo Eccli, Cristina Miranda de Almeida.

Board Committee: Alan Albarran (University of North Texas, United States), Rogério Barbosa Da Silva (Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais, Brazil), Giovanni Baule (Politecnico di Milano, Italy), Laura Borràs Castanyer (Universitat de Barcelona, Spain), Derrick de Kerckhove (Politecnico di Milano, Italy), Henry Jenkins (University of Southern California, United States), Marsha Kinder (University of Southern California, United States), Raine Koskimaa (University of Jyväskylä, Finland), George Landow (Brown University, United States), Paul Levinson (Fordham University, United States), Asún López-Varela (Universidad Complutense, Spain), Lev Manovich (City University of New York, United States), Nick Montfort (Massachusetts Institute of Technology, United States), Marcos Novak (UCLA - University of California, Los Angeles, United States), Massimo Parodi (Università degli Studi di Milano, Italy), Bruce W. Powe (York University, Canada), Kate Pullinger (Bath Spa University, United Kingdom), Marie-Laure Ryan (Indipendent Scholar), Alexandra Saemmer (Université Paris 8, France), Carlos Scolari (Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Spain), Susana Tosca (IT University of Copenhagen, Denmark), Alessandro Zinna (Université Toulouse II, France)

Username
Password
Remember me