Alice in the intertextual labyrinth: from hypertext to the screen

Abstract

This paper intends to analyse the hypotextual character of a classic work of children's literature: Lewis Carroll's novel, Alice in Wonderland. The work presented is structured as follows. In a first section we refer to the theoretical notions of hypertextuality and intertextuality. Subsequently, we analyze the Victorian novel as an example of hypertextual text from two aspects. On the one hand the concept of literature within literature that occurs in the novel and, on the other hand, we analyze the intertextual relationships that occur between the text of Carroll and other literary and audiovisual works such as the film version of Tim Burton or the novel by Diego Arboleda, Prohibido leer a Lewis Carroll. Eventually, we value Alicia's relationships with hypermodal texts, which allow us to better understand the nineteenth-century novel and broaden the horizon of reader expectations.