CFP: MSA17: Modernism and Wonderland

In the context of modernism, we often think of “revolution” in terms of rupture and rejection, stylistic advances, and the wholesale dismissal of the past in favour of the mandate to “make it new.” However, “revolution” also refers to “a convolution; a twist; a turn; a loop” or a “cyclical recurrence” (OED). Our sense of modernist rupture must necessarily be formulated alongside this notion of cyclicality. This panel aims to explore the ways in which modernist writers play with and borrow from Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland, in all its convolutions, twists, turns, and loops, with the aim of examining how this intertextuality can be interpreted as a form of revolution. Proposals for papers on modernist reworkings of wonderland are very welcome and might also be considered for an edited collection.