著者

芦田川 祐子

出版者

文教大学

雑誌

言語文化研究科紀要 = Bulletin of the Bunkyo University Graduate School of Language and Culture (ISSN:21892709)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.1, no.1, pp.1-18, 2015

---

This paper attempts to examine Lewis Carroll's Sylvie and Bruno in relation to the tradition of fairy tales to see what can or cannot be original about the work. There are three main points for analysis: the depiction of fairies, the view about different worlds, and the notion of childhood. These all show how Sylvie and Bruno is both conventional and innovative. The fairies, Sylvie and Bruno, are based on the traditional fairies who teach children right from wrong, but they are themselves children and sometimes need to be taught. While the fairy world is both distinguished from and mixed with the human world in a unique way, the idealised children are not much different from those of other Victorian fairy tales. However, what is noteworthy is that the whole story is told by the narrator as an old man, who is also one of the main characters. The novel can be described as the narrator's attempt to catch something fairyish, constituting a fairy tale about the elusiveness of such things as fairy tales, dreams, and childhood.