C.S. Lewis vs. Lewis Carroll: "Animal, Vegetable or Min

[Master Orban]

Recently I read "Alice in Wonderland" and the sequel "Through the Looking Glass and what Alice found there".
I was a little startled as I read about the Lion asking Alice wether she was animal, vegetable or mineral. It's exactly the same sentence that C.S. used in TMN.
Now every writer will probably let himself be inspired by the works of others, but this is a 1:1 copy. This brought me to the question whether there is anything special to know about this phrase. Was it so perfectly matching that he couldn't withstand to use it? Are there more copied passages in the books?

[jo]

Animal, vegetable or mineral is a popular children's guessing game :). Well the beginning of one anyway. One person has to think of something and the other has to guess it using as few questions as possible. The first question is generally 'animal, vegetable or mineral.'

[Leslie]

You can find a game in progress in Dickens' A Christmas Carol, at Scrooge's nephew Fred's Christmas party.

[Master Orban]

Now that explains a lot.
We do not have this game in Germany (but similar ones), or at least I never heard of it when I was a child.

Thx

Master Orban

[A#minor]

It's 20 questions, right? I used to play that on long car trips with my siblings.

[Erekose]

[David]

There is an awful lot of intertextuality in The Chronicles of Narnia. Lewis frequently references other texts. I would not be surprised at all if the Lions asking identical questions isn't a deliberate nod at the Lewis Carrol text. In other texts, Bree is very much like the one of the Houynmns, the wise talking horses, in Gulliver's Travels. When Glimfeather and his friends get together for their little hooting Parliament, the title of the chapter is "A Parliament of Owls," referencing Chaucer's work The Parliament of Fowls. So I imagine the similarity of lions in The Magician's Nephew and Alice in Wonderland is not accidental.

[carol]

[David]

[David]

By the way, if anyone ever visits Christ Church College, Oxford, there is a Lewis Carroll stained glass window among the many stained glass windows in the dining hall. It has Alice, the Mad Hatter, the DoDo bird, and others on it. It's not huge, you have to look hard to find it, but it's cute.

There are lots of statues and plaques to Dodgsons all over Christ Church College. Carroll's family must have been prominent in that place where he eventually went to school.

[Bill]

[Leslie]

[carol]

[David]

[Master Orban]