French Literature Reviews - 2026

V. Iché, L'Esthétique du jeu dans les Alice de Lewis Carroll
Literary Theory, Linguistics and Stylistics

Virginie Iché, L'Esthétique du jeu dans les Alice de Lewis Carroll

Preface by Jean-Jacques Lecercle.

Paris: L'Harmattan, coll. "Critiques littéraires", 2015.

260 p.

EAN 9782343079271 (PDF Ebook format: 9782336398471)

EUR 27.00 (digital version: EUR 20.99)

Publisher's overview:

Virginie Iché's analysis of games and toys, wordplay and linguistic games, as well as narrative and intertextual games, highlights the foundational tension between freedom and rules that characterizes the Alice books, and, beyond that, the process of subjectivation running through these works. This study also sheds light on the remarkable adaptability of Carroll's oeuvre, its enduring vitality, and its capacity to continually inspire new interpretations and challenges 150 years after its first publication.

Virginie Iché is a Senior Lecturer at Paul-Valéry Montpellier 3 University. Her research combines stylistics, pragmatics, enunciative linguistics, and reception theory. She is the author of L'Esthétique du jeu dans les Alice de Lewis Carroll (L'Harmattan, 2015), has published articles on the pragmatic translations of Carrollian Nonsense into French, the relationship between text and illustrations in the Alice books, and the role of the transcontextualization of nursery rhymes in Through the Looking-Glass. She has also participated in national and international conferences on play and the Alice books, where she has examined, among other things, the (strictly limited) role assigned to the reader in The Nursery Alice, and the way in which the individual reader disrupts collective language in the Alice books.

The study of ludic elements in nineteenth-century English literature often draws on specialized linguistic approaches, connecting nonsense writing with broader traditions of literary wordplay. Scholars in the field frequently examine how children's literature engages with pragmatic theory, stylistics, and the mechanics of reception. Virginie Iché's analysis of games and toys, wordplay and linguistic games, as well as narrative and intertextual games, highlights the foundational tension between freedom and rules that characterizes the Alice books, and, beyond that, the process of subjectivation running through these works. Readers interested in Victorian literature, nonsense verse, or narrative theory may find this volume relevant.

This study also sheds light on the remarkable adaptability of Carroll's oeuvre, its enduring vitality, and its capacity to continually inspire new interpretations and challenges 150 years after its first publication. Virginie Iché is a Senior Lecturer at Paul-Valéry Montpellier 3 University whose research combines stylistics, pragmatics, enunciative linguistics, and reception theory. Her published work includes articles on the pragmatic translations of Carrollian Nonsense into French, the relationship between text and illustrations in the Alice books, and the role of the transcontextualization of nursery rhymes in Through the Looking-Glass.