Abstracts assignment

“Alice’s Adventures in Algebra: Wonderland Solved” by Melanie Bayley
New Scientist, December 16, 2009

The author argues that Lewis Carroll’s Alice books can be interpreted as a reaction against new mathematical concepts on the rise in Carroll’s time, an interpretation supported by the fact that Carroll was the penname of mathematician Charles Dodgson. The conservative and strictly Euclidian Dodgson was against the new “symbolic algebra” with its concepts like “imaginary numbers”. Dodgson satirized these concepts by taking Alice out of the rational world and placing her in one where everything and everyone behaves irrationally. The author also asserts that this satirical standpoint elevates the Alice stories above his other works, which tend to be dull and moralistic.

“Words and Pictures: Graphic Novels Come of Age” by Peter Schjeldahl
The New Yorker, October 17, 2005

The author discusses the current state of comics and graphic novels, equating the form’s current popularity among youth to that of poetry in past generations. He points to Chris Ware’s recent “Jimmy Corrigan” as possibly the first masterpiece of the form, and sees Ware’s protagonist as major archetype of comics - that of the tortured and humiliated male - which can be traced back to characters like Superman and Charlie Brown. He proceeds to look at other major influences on modern-day comics such as MAD magazine and the work of R. Crumb and the development of the form through other artist like Harvey Pekar and Art Spiegelman. After looking at the work of current artists like Daniel Clowes and Marjane Satrapi, he comes back to Ware and suggests that while “Jimmy Corrigan” could represent the pinnacle of the form, it will continue to gain new ground for years to come.