In Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking Glass, in the chapter on the Lion and the Unicorn, there’s this whole bit about Anglo-Saxon attitudes.
…and more.
I don’t get it. Someone interpret for me, please?
IIRC, at the time there was a rather large fad of “Anglo-Saxon” poetry & writing going on in England. Carroll was making fun of said fad. His poem Jabberwocky is on the same theme.
The “Anglo-Saxon attitudes” gag is definitely one of the more obscure allusions in the book, and I have to wonder if it wasn’t just a private joke of Carroll’s that he decided to throw in there for the hell of it. I think it refers to the extremely stylized appearance of medieval Anglo-Saxon illustration, which tended to treat the human figure in a peculiarly schematic two-dimensional manner somewhat akin to ancient Egyptian art. The Bayeux tapestry is one of the better-known examples, but if you happen to have a copy of **Monty Python and the Holy Grail ** lying around, Terry Gilliam’s animations reference the same style (as do Pauline Baynes’ illustrations for Tolkien’s *Farmer Giles of Ham * and Smith of Wootton Major). To the modern eye, which tends to expect more naturalistic treatment, Anglo-Saxon illustration does often seem to suggest that the people depicted are “skipping up and down, and wriggling like an eel,” with fan-shaped, elongated hands, rolling eyes, etc.
I believe that Tenniel’s illustrations of Haigha are also intended to convey this idea. Notice how the character is posed rather artificially, one toe outstretched, arms and hands extended in a weirdly ostentatious manner.
Presumably since this chapter of the book makes mention of kings and crowns and British heraldry and such, the Anglo-Saxon bit must have seemed vaguely apropos, at least in the mind of a demented mathematician.
There are enough obscure references in the Alice books that it might be a good idea to get a hold of Martin Gardner’s The Annotated Alice, which has notes explaining pretty much all of those references.
Enlightening! Thanks, y’all.