Thesis: “A New Evaluation: The Theological Influence of F. D. Maurice on the Imaginative Works of Lewis Carroll”

The thesis explores how the fictional work of Lewis Carroll was influenced by mid nineteenth century eschatological ideas and controversies, particularly in relation to how eternity was understood and explored by F. D. Maurice and other Broad Church theologians who were friends and acquaintances of Carroll.

Gardiner attempts to answer the following questions in het thesis:

• To what extent can Carroll’s fantasy literature be read theologically (and specifically eschatologically) taking into account the particular Church controversies at large at his time of writing?
• Specifically, in what ways does he tackle the question of the meaning of the word “eternal” in his literature?
• How can Carroll’s known relationship with, and interest in, F. D. Maurice and the Broad Church movement, especially around the word “eternal,” be seen to have influenced his writing?

Throughout the thesis, she argues that theological themes are present in Carroll’s work throughout his life, becoming more prominent and visible in his later works. She provides evidence to suggest that Lewis Carroll’s imaginative works contain theology within the nonsense, and that he was particularly influenced by the eschatology of F. D. Maurice and those writers and theologians connected to him through the Christian Socialist Movement (Charles Kingsley), the Cambridge Apostles (Farrar and Trench), the church at Vere Street (George MacDonald) and through wider Broad Church and Oxford interests (Jowett and Max Müller) amongst others.

Gardiner’s ideas presented in this thesis are significant, in that they show that the theology and theologians that Carroll engaged with are not merely relegated to a side compartment of his life, but rather these beliefs are expressed and developed obliquely in the Alice books and then overtly in Sylvie and Bruno. Thus, this thesis presents the argument that it is not tenable to suggest that Carroll’s theology was unconnected to his fictional writing,

More information about the thesis and a download of the complete text can be found at https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/72436/

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