The Matrix and the Alice Books (Lulu Books, 2010, 100 pages) by Voicu Mihnea Simandan presents aspects of intertextuality in the motion picture The Matrix and the books Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass by Lewis Carroll.
Intertextuality is a set of relations with other texts, which can include direct quotations, allusions, literary conventions, imitation, parody and unconscious sources amongst others. Intertextuality also involves assumptions regarding the existing knowledge of the reader, the situation being referred to, and its context.
This book presents aspects of intertextuality in three primary sources. These sources are the script of the motion picture The Matrix written by directors Andy and Larry Wachowski, and the books Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass by Lewis Carroll.
In The Matrix there are few explicit references to Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass. However, review writers and researchers covering The Matrix have suggested that there are many other elements of intertextuality of a less obvious nature which closely link the Alice books and The Matrix.
This book by Voicu Mihnea Simandan presents both the explicit references and the less direct ones, giving evidence from primary and secondary sources. In doing so, it makes use of a literary construction developed from Gérard Genette’s structuralist theory of transtextuality as a framework to present how a web of intertextual relationships is clearly formed between the Alice books and The Matrix.
My intertextual study The Matrix and the Alice Books looks at the way Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass have influenced some of the ideas put forth by Andy and Larry Wachowski. The book is now available as a Kindle ebook too.
