SOURCE: Ashbourne, M. S. “The Cheshire-Cat: Sign of Signs.” Interdisciplinary Journal for Germanic Linguistics and Semiotic Analysis 6, no. 1 (spring 2001): 79-106.

In the following essay, Ashbourne examines the semiotic implications of the Cheshire Cat in the Alice stories.

On January 14, 1898, Charles Dodgson, a.k.a. Lewis Carroll, died at the age of 65 years, leaving the world to grieve the loss of one of its most gifted writers of books for children. Both Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (hereinafter: Wonderland) and Alice Through the Looking Glass (hereinafter: Looking Glass) are considered to be childhood classics, although some believe that “the time is past when a child under fifteen, even in England, can read Alice with the same delight as gained from, say, The Wind in the Willows or The Wizard of Oz. It is only because adults—scientists and mathematicians in particular—continue to relish the Alice books that they are...