A master’s student at USC Gould School of Law won first prize at USC Libraries’ Wonderland Award reception on Tuesday, April 23, hosted in Doheny Memorial Library. Master of Laws student Elijah Granet’s submission, Snark Raving Mad: Legal Nonsense and Reality in “The Barrister’s Fit,” consisted of a line-by-line analysis of a section of Lewis Carroll’s long nonsense poem “The Hunting of the Snark” through the prism of the early modern English legal system. His work, “both one of scholarship and of aesthetics” as he describes it, includes a rigorous evaluation of absurd medieval laws surrounding the keeping of pigs, and exquisite period typography. His summation describes how “Carroll’s brilliance shines in the fact that the reader comes out of the paradoxical mix of fantasy and reality, unsure which is which, and perhaps spurred . . . to think more critically on the silliness of the actual justice system.”
The Wonderland Award is an annual competition, established in 2005 by USC Libraries Board of Councilors member Linda Cassady, showcasing the interpretive talents of students from USC and other Southern California institutions as they transform the life and works of Lewis Carroll into new creative and scholarly works. The student submissions will all eventually become part of the USC Digital Library.
To read the full story on the USC Libraries site, click here.
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