ABSTRACT
This chapter delves into the idea, implicit in many of Carroll's stories, that language is the organizing principle of space: in naming, we claim spaces as forms and objects of knowledge. This chapter examines instances of naming—people, places, and things—in the Alice stories, from Alice's discussion with the Gnat in “Looking-Glass Insects” to Humpty Dumpty's wall from which he claims mastery over words, to the White Knight's struggle to keep his balance as he carries around things rather than trusting words. In keeping with the paradoxical nature of Carroll's work, these stories always hint at their opposite—the unnamed or unnameable—pointing to the limits of experience while opening ways to think about space in relation to speech and action, as place.
