Lewis Carroll y Apuleyo. Alicia/Psique en el País de las Maravillas: una catábasis sui géneris

Abstract

This paper attempts to interpret Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland as an example of the classical motif of the ‘katabasis’ or descent into the Underworld, a descensus ad Inferos sui generis, conditioned by having its origin as a fairy tale intended for the entertainment of a child reader (descensus ad Terram Mirabilem): this tale would have as its matrix reference the similar vicissitude of Psyche in the ‘tale of the marriage of Cupid and Psyche’ from the Metamorphoses or The Golden Ass by the Roman author Apuleius.