Lewis caroll

Should the fact that we was very likely a pedophile detract from or alter how we read his works?

mfw

>the design or intention of the author is neither available nor desirable as a standard for judging the success of a work of literary art.

if overwhelming evidence emerged that shakespeare was a rapist should we disown him?

Huh. Maybe?

If you like, but reading Alice, what strikes me is his utter lack of salacious descriptions or even romanticizing the girl. She's a fairly rude, dense, realistic kid and he wastes no time talking about her flaxen hair or dewy eyes, let alone her slender calves or rosebud lips. There's nothing within the text to suggest any erotic obsession, so it seems a distraction at best. Besides, judging Victorian virginal men who loved hanging out with kids as if they were modern sex-crazed pedos is very misleading.

>Likely a pedophile

And you're likely a faggot

Chaucer for one is still fine, though I guess if that sort of revelation came during this precise period we're in, things might happen differently

Have you ever seen his photography? It is pretty much indisputable. Alice is in all kind if lewd poses in them, that would make a playboy model blush

Of course.
We should also read "Sein und Zeit" considering the author was a notorious nazi. I mean the whole "seinen" thing is just a word for the aryan race, am I right?

Utter bullshit. The photos are posed, modest, and basically dress-up sketches. We have only three nudes by him, and they're basically classic painting poses, aside from the age of the model. There's nothing "lewd" about them. And that's ALL his photos: the closest thing to a nude of Alice Liddel is an off-the-shoulder "beggar maid" outfit. Any reason why you're lying?

can someone explain how exactly it would do that

>Any reason why (they)'re lying?
What is this website

Probably not.

I mean, people still rate Roman Polanski; the only people who still shriek and howl about him are the social justice advocates; the academia don't give a shit.

This.

Polanski films are great. The fact that he's a child predator doesn't detract from the formal elements that make his movies noteworthy. That's not how art works.

'Authors' are useful for situating their books historically but that's about it.

Yea but he was banned from the house of the little girls he based the book on.

>he was banned from the house of the little girls he based the book on.
Source? I've never heard this.

Yes, he apparently fell out of favour with Mrs. Liddell, but despite the salacious guesses of some critics, the reasons were likely fairly mundane. Around June 27-29 1863 an important change occurred in Carroll’s relations with the Liddell family, but the description of it was purposely removed from the diary. This has lead to a lot of speculation about what happened.

Relations between Dodgson (Carroll) and Alice’s parents were never optimal. This may be because Alice’s mother considered Dodgson’s social status to be too low, or because he often opposed to Dean Liddell’s way of running Christ Church College. Mrs. Liddell later on went so far as to burn all his early letters to Alice.
On October 28 1862, Dodgson wrote in his diaries being out of Mrs. Liddell’s good graces “ever since Lord Newry’s business”. This ‘business’ was a disagreement about lifting the college curfew for Lord Newry’s ball, which Dodgson opposed. Still, his visits to the Deanery to see the Liddell sisters continued. The famous missing pages cut from his diary are used as the "smoking gun" for Carroll being naughty or even proposing to Alice (highly unlikely).
A note has been found that seems to have been written by family members of Charles Dodgson. One side contains biographical notes about the Liddell daughters and Alice’s descendants. The other is headed ‘Cut Pages in Diary’ and contains summaries of the contents of three pages, two from Volume Eight and one from Volume Eleven. The second summary from Volume Eight is of the missing page. It reads:
“L.C. learns from Mrs Liddell that he is supposed to be using the children as a means of paying court to the governess – he is also supposed [unreadable] to be courting Ina.” The unreadable portion may possibly say ‘by some’. It is written in the hand of Lewis Carroll’s niece Violet Dodgson, who was co-guardian of the diaries from the early 1940s to the late 1960s.

Apparently, Violet must have gone through the diaries after Dodgson’s death, noting the pages to be cut for censoring and summarizing their most important contents. The governess mentioned in the note was Miss Prickett. There had indeed been gossip circulating about her and Dodgson back in 1857, but Dodgson described it in his diary as ‘so groundless a rumour’. ‘Ina’ is Lorina Liddell. However, whether Dodgson indeed courted Alice’s older sister, and whether this was the reason for the break-up, has never been confirmed by any evidence. The matter still remains a mystery. However, he certainly had polite communication with Alice as a grown woman. In June 1863 Lorina was fourteen years old and highly developed for her age; a young woman, not a child, by the standards of the day. If his courtship was refused, it would be more likely due to above factors (his social status, etc.). Nothing is certain, but it seems likely that if Carroll had been accused of anything truly unsavory or horrible to Mrs. Liddell, things would have gone beyond just their stopping being friends. As for his photographs, Carroll was an remarkable early amateur and photographed many things, but of course all that is ever seen or discussed now are his photos of daughters of family friends.

Should the fact that we was very likely a pedophile detract from or alter how we read his works?

He was most likely a pedophile but his Victorian and Christian morals prevented him from acting upon any of his more lustful desires.

Should the fact that he had no discernible talent detract from or alter how we read his works?

>look at nude photos of children
>i-it's just research!

Thanks user.