ABSTRACT

A crucial and under-examined aspect of “The Walrus and the Carpenter” in Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking-Glass (1871) is the relationship between euphemism and atrocity in the dealings with the anthropomorphised entities that are – or are in danger of becoming – food. Based on a close reading of the poem, this article explores how aesthetics and ethics work in considerations of form and courtesy, which impact the lives of such anthropomorphised entities. Situated at the intersections of anthropomorphism studies, animal ethics, and Carrollian scholarship, it is argued that nonsense, heightened by anthropomorphism, is a powerful means of aestheticizing contradictions. Regarding food anthropomorphism as both rhetorically and ethically invested reveals the contradictions between aesthetic forms of society and the grisly truth of human intraspecies relationships and human-animal relationships from the imperialist context to the contemporary situations of meat eating.

摘要

刘易斯·卡罗尔的《镜中人》中“海象与木匠”的一个关键且未充分研究的方面（1871）是委婉语和暴行之间的关系，在与拟人化实体打交道时，这些实体是——或有成为——食物的危险。基于对这首诗的仔细阅读，本文探讨了美学和伦理如何在考虑形式和礼貌的情况下发挥作用，这会影响这些拟人化实体的生活。位于拟人化研究、动物伦理学和卡罗尔学术的交叉点，有人认为，拟人化加剧的胡说八道是将矛盾审美化的有力手段。