Down the Rabbit Hole: Dedications in the Works of Lewis Carroll, J. M. Barrie, and C. S. Lewis

The paper analyzes dedications in children’s literature through the paratextual categories outlined by Gérard Genette. In particular, the study focuses on those dedications addressed to the children who became the main characters of the works dedicated to them. These dedications maximally manifest their function of vestibules, connecting reality and literary fiction, thus assuming fundamental importance for a deep understanding of the literary works. The paper uses as cases of study the dedications in Alice's Adventures under Ground, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, and Through the Looking-Glass, written by Lewis Carroll to Alice Liddell; “To the Five,” the dedication to the Davies brothers in the opening of J.M. Barrie's play Peter Pan: the Boy Who Wouldn't Grow Up; and finally the dedication letter addressed to Lucy Barfield by C.S. Lewis in The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe. After questioning why no dedications addressed to children appear before the mid-nineteenth century, the paper examines the study cases to determine whether they follow Genette's model or deviate from it. The analysis highlights how the dedications, which are work dedications, present aspects of exemplar dedications and private epitexts. Indeed, they maintain a private nature of the communicative act thanks to textual references that only the dedicatees can interpret fully. The analysis also observes some recurrent themes in all the dedications: the idea of the book as a gift from the adult to the child; the remembrance of the moment of genesis of the story, clearly separated from the moment of writing; and the presence of the threshold not only in the paratext but also as a theme. The research thus tries to answer two questions: if the moment of the story's genesis is separated from the moment of writing, can dedications shed light on why the story was written down? And how do the temporal relationships expressed in the dedications give keys to interpreting how time is portrayed within the stories?