Diferencia entre revisiones de «Lewis Carroll»
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También publicó con su verdadero nombre muchos artículos y libros de tema matemático. Destacan ''[[El juego de la lógica]]'' y ''[[Euclides y sus rivales modernos]]'' además de ''[[An Elementary Theory of Determinants]]'' escrito en 1867. En este último da las condiciones por las cuales un sistema de ecuaciones tiene soluciones no triviales.
== Controversias e incógnitas ==
=== Consumo de estupefacientes ===
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Ha habido multitud de especulaciones sobre la posibilidad de que Dodgson hiciera uso de [[droga|drogas psicoactivas]], aunque no existe prueba alguna que respalde esta teoría. No obstante, la mayoría de los historiadores consideran probable que el autor utilizase de vez en cuando [[láudano]], un [[analgésico]] de consumo bastante común en la época, y que le ayudaría con el dolor de su [[artritis]]. Hay que señalar que esta sustancia procede del [[opio]], y puede producir efectos psicotrópicos si es utilizado en dosis lo suficientemente grandes. Pese a ello, no existe evidencia alguna que pueda llevar a pensar que Dodgson abusara de los narcóticos, ni de que éstos tuvieran influencia alguna en su trabajo. Por otro lado, algunos han creído ver en las alucinaciones que sufre su personaje, Alicia, una referencia a las sustancias psicodélicas. Por ejemplo, en el caso de la Amanita Muscaria que produce macrostesia y microstesia, vemos una analogía en las variaciones de tamaño que sufre Alicia al ingerir trozos de seta.
=== Sacerdocio ===
Dodgson estaba destinado a terminar como sacerdote, dada su condición de residente en la ''Christ Church''. No obstante, empezaría a rechazar esta idea, retrasando el momento de convertirse en diácono hasta diciembre de 1861. Cuando un año después, le tocaba dar el siguiente paso para convertirse en sacerdote, apeló a Liddell para no continuar. Esa actitud no era compatible con las normas, y el propio Liddell le contó que probablemente tendría que dejar su trabajo si renunciaba al sacerdocio, aunque lo consultaría con el órgano de gobierno de la institución, algo que indudablemente, le hubiera acarreado una expulsión. Por razones desconocidas, Lidell cambió de opinión y permitió que Dodgson se quedase y no llegase jamás al sacerdocio.<ref>Dodgson's ''MS diaries'', volumen 8, [[22 de octubre|22]]–[[24 de octubre]] de [[1862]]</ref>
No existe pista concluyente alguna que permita averiguar por qué Dodgson evitó convertirse en sacerdote. Algunos han señalado que su tartamudez pudo influir en la decisión, de manera que hubiera tenido miedo de dar sermones. No obstante, Dodgson no evitaba hablar en público, ni tenía problema alguno con actuaciones tales como contar cuentos, u ofrecer espectáculos de magia. Además, en su última etapa, llegaría a predicar, pese a no ostentar la condición de sacerdote.
===The priesthood===
Others have suggested, perhaps more plausibly, that he was having serious doubts about the Anglican church. It is known that he was interested in minority forms of Christianity (he was an admirer of [[Frederick Maurice|FD Maurice]]) and 'alternative' religions ([[Theosophy]]) so this may well have been a reason. However, it is also true that Dodgson was deeply troubled by an unexplained sense of sin and guilt at this time (the early 1860s), and frequently expressed the view in his diaries that he was a "vile and worthless" sinner, unworthy of the priesthood,<ref>Dodgson's MS diaries, volume 8, see prayers scattered throughout the text</ref> so this may well also have been a contributing factor.
Currently it is unknown why Dodgson was consumed with a sense of sin at this time, though again several theories have been put forward.
===The missing diaries===
At least four complete volumes<ref>Leach, p. 48</ref> and around seven pages<ref>Leach, p. 51</ref> of text are missing from Dodgson's 13 diaries. The loss of the volumes remains unexplained; the pages have been deliberately removed by an unknown hand. Most scholars assume the diary material was removed by family members in the interests of preserving the family name, but this has not been proven.<ref>Leach, pp. 48-51</ref> All of the missing material, except for a single page, is believed to date from the period between 1853 (when Dodgson was 22) and 1863 (when he was 32).<ref>Leach, p. 52</ref>
Many theories have been put forward to explain the missing material. A popular explanation for one particular missing page (June 27, 1863) is that it might have been torn out to conceal the fact that Dodgson had proposed marriage on that day to the 11-year old Alice Liddell. However, there has never been any evidence to suggest this was so, and a paper<ref>Dodgson Family Collection, Cat. No. F/17/1. "[http://www.lookingforlewiscarroll.com/cutpages.html Cut Pages in Diary]". (For an account of its discovery see ''The Times Literary Supplement'', [[3 May]] [[1996]].)</ref> that came to light in the Dodgson family archive in 1996 provides some evidence to the contrary. This paper, known as the 'cut pages in diary document', offers a brief summary of two missing diary pages, including the one for June 27, 1863. It states that there was gossip circulating about Dodgson and the Liddell family's governess, as well as about his relationship with 'Ina', presumably Alice's older sister, Lorina Liddell. The 'break' with the Liddell family that occurred soon after was presumably in response to this gossip.<ref> Leach, Karoline [http://shadowofthedreamchild.wild-reality.net''In the Shadow of the Dreamchild''] pp. 170-2.</ref><ref>(text of the document available online at [http://www.lookingforlewiscarroll.com/cutpages.html Looking for Lewis Carroll/cutpages.html]).</ref> An alternate interpretation has been made regarding Carroll's rumored involvement with 'Ina': Lorina was also the name of Alice Liddell's mother. The reason for the break has never been made clear.
===Suggestions of paedophilia===
Dodgson's friendships with young girls, together with his perceived lack of interest in romantic attachments to adult women, and psychological readings of his work - especially his photographs of nude or semi-nude girls<ref>Cohen, Morten N. (1996) ''Lewis Carroll: A Biography.''(Macmillan, 1995) pp. 166-167, 254-255.</ref> - have all led to speculation that he was, in modern parlance, a [[pedophile|paedophile]]. This possibility has underpinned numerous modern interpretations of his life and work, particularly [[Dennis Potter]]'s play ''Alice'' and his screenplay for the motion picture, ''[[Dreamchild]]'', and a number of recent biographies, including [[Michael Bakewell]]'s ''[[Lewis Carroll: A Biography]]'' (1996), Donald Thomas's ''[[Lewis Carroll: A Portrait with Background]]'' (1996) and [[Morton N. Cohen]]'s ''[[Lewis Carroll: A Biography]]'' (1995). All of these works more or less unequivocally assume that Dodgson was a paedophile, albeit a repressed and celibate one.
Cohen claims Dodgson's "sexual energies sought unconventional outlets", and further writes:
:''We cannot know to what extent sexual urges lay behind Charles's preference for drawing and photographing children in the nude. He contended the preference was entirely aesthetic. But given his emotional attachment to children as well as his aesthetic appreciation of their forms, his assertion that his interest was strictly artistic is naïve. He probably felt more than he dared acknowledge, even to himself. ''<ref>Cohen, Morton, ''Lewis Carroll, a biography'' (Macmillan, 1995)</ref>
Cohen notes that Dodgson "apparently convinced many of his friends that his attachment to the nude female child form was free of any [[erotic]]ism", but adds that "later generations look beneath the surface" (p 229).
Cohen and other biographers argue that Dodgson may have wanted to marry the 11-year old Alice Liddell and that this was the cause of the unexplained 'break' with the family in June, 1863 (Cohen pp 100-4). But there has never been much evidence to support such an idea, and the 1996 discovery of the 'cut pages in diary document' (see above) seems to imply that the 1863 'break' had nothing to do with Alice. However, the document's provenance has been disputed, and its final significance is unknown.
Some writers, e.g., [[Derek Hudson]] and [[Roger Lancelyn Green]], who have fallen short of accepting Dodgson as a paedophile, have tended to concur that he had a passion for small female children and next to no interest in the adult world. The issue is considered at length in [[Darien Graham-Smith]]'s 2005 PhD thesis ''Contextualising Carroll'', and in [[Sadi Ranson]]'s article [http://tantmieux.squarespace.com/sadi-ranson-polizzotti-article/2006/8/29/what-about-lewis-carroll.html What About Lewis Carroll?], which discusses claims of Dodgson's "nympholepsy" (as [[Vladimir Nabokov]] called it) and the roles children took in Victorian art.
==="The Carroll Myth"===
The accepted view of Dodgson's biography — and most particularly his image as a potential paedophile — has received a challenge in quite recent times, when a new and controversial analysis of Dodgson's sexual proclivities (and indeed the evolution of the entire process of his biography) appeared in [[Karoline Leach]]'s 1999 book ''[[In the Shadow of the Dreamchild]]''. She states that the image of Dodgson's alleged paedophilia was built out of a failure to understand Victorian morals, as well as the mistaken idea that Dodgson had no interest in adult women which evolved out of the minds of various biographers. She termed this simplified — and often, in her view, fictional — image "the Carroll Myth".
According to Leach, Dodgson's real life was very different from the accepted biographical image. He was not, she says, exclusively interested in female children. She acknowledges he was fond of children, but says this interest has been exaggerated. She says that he was also keenly interested in adult women and apparently enjoyed several relationships with them, married and single; furthermore, she goes on to state that many of those Dodgson described as 'child-friends' were not children at all, but girls in their late teens and even twenties.<ref>Leach, pp. 16-17</ref> She cites examples of many such adult friendships, such as Catherine Lloyd, Constance Burch, May Miller, Edith Shute, Ethel Rowell, Beatrice Hatch and Gertrude Thomson, among others. Some of these were girls he met as children but continued to be close to in adulthood. Others were, says Leach, women he met as adults and with whom he shared very close and meaningful friendships. Suggestions of paedophilia only evolved many years after his death, says Leach, when his well-meaning family had suppressed all evidence of his adult friendships in order to try to preserve his reputation, thus giving a false impression of a man interested only in little girls.
According to Leach the image of 'Lewis Carroll' was constructed almost accidentally by generations of biographers. One of these, Langford Reed, writing in 1932, was the first to state that many of Carroll's female friendships ended when the girls reached the age of 14,<ref>Leach, p. 33</ref> though Reed apparently only intended to suggest that Dodgson was thereby a "pure man" untainted by sexual desire.<ref>Leach, p. 32</ref> This statement, that Dodgson lost interest in girls once they reached [[puberty]], was later caught up by other biographers, including [[Florence Becker Lennon]] (''[[Victoria Through the Looking-Glass]]'' — UK title "Lewis Carroll", 1945) and the highly influential [[Alexander Taylor]] (''[[The White Knight]]''), 1952 who remained unaware of the evidence to the contrary since Dodgson's family refused to publish his diaries and letters. By the time more evidence became available, this image was so ingrained that any revision seemed "unnecessary, even impertinent,"<ref>Leach, Ch. 1</ref> and thus a supposed biography was preserved. This, in essence, is Leach's case.
Reactions to Leach's book have been generally polarised. She has been joined by a group of supportive scholars and writers (most notably [[Hugues Lebailly]]) in the formation of [[Contrariwise]], an 'association for new Lewis Carroll studies'. The group argues collectively that a rumour has grossly distorted our understanding of Dodgson's true nature, and that considered in the context of his real life — as opposed to the misconceptions of it — and the fashions and mores of his time, assertions of paedophilia become nonsensical and amount to a failure to understand the complexity of Dodgson's character, as well as the Victorian "Cult of the Child."
Dodgson biographer [[Morton N. Cohen]] repudiates Leach's position as being simply a plea for the defence, and, in a recent article in the ''[[Times Literary Supplement]]'' labeled Leach and her supporters as 'revisionists' attempting to rewrite history.<ref>Cohen, Morton N. "When Love was Young", ''Times Literary Supplement'', October 2003</ref> Similarly, in a review published in Victorian Studies (Vol. 43, No 4), Donald Rackin wrote, "As a piece of biographical scholarship, Karoline Leach's ''In the Shadow of the Dreamchild'' is difficult to take seriously". [[Martin Gardner]] was likewise dismissive in an article published by the Lewis Carroll Society of North America.<ref> Gardner, Martin, comments in ''Knight Letter'', the journal of the Lewis Carroll Society of North America, Autumn 2005</ref>
Writing in The Carrollian, Michael Bakewell takes a measured view, saying that Leach's book has irrevocably changed Carroll studies. "[W]e may not agree with it but we cannot ignore it and it should certainly be read by anyone concerned with Dodgson's life and work."<ref>Bakewell, Michael, review of ''In the Shadow of the Dreamchild'' in ''The Carrollian'', Spring 1999</ref>
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== Véase también ==
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