32nd Annual Student Research Conference
Tell Me the Dreams in Wonderland Smoke
Daniel P. Jennings
Dr. Hena Ahmad, Faculty Mentor
This paper will examine the rumored fact of Lewis Caroll’s and Edgar Allen Poe’s relationship with the drug opium, the drug that they never were addicted to. Opium leaked into their writing of how it impacted the human psyche. Poe did take opium for medical purposes. However, there is little evidence that Carroll did. Carroll and Poe wrote about the effects of opium they had seen on others. Indeed, Poe’s characters are opium users. This paper will further illuminate the differences between the two and how modern society relates them with the drug opium. Knowledge of the historical context of the Opium Crisis in New England, and specifically how it led to altered mental states, impacted the reader, changing the reader’s perception, assuming that both writers must have been on opium in order to be able to produce the imagery caused or generated by opium use.
Keywords: Lewis Carrol, Edgar Allen Poe, History, Story
Topic(s):English
Creative Writing
Presentation Type: Oral Paper
Session: 205-4
Location: BH 241
Time: 11:00