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#TudorMary

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Snarkology @snarkology

"Burning the Baker", LCSNA Knight Letter (http://www.lewiscarroll.org/publications/knightletter/) № 100, Spring 2018, p. 55~56 (https://snrk.de/knight-letter-100/)

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Burning the Baker
by Goetz Kluge, 2018

I interpret Lewis Carroll and Henry Holiday’s epic "The Hunting of the Snark" as a ballad about how man’s pursuit of happiness ends tragically when the struggle for the right path to the truth turns from legitimate dispute (Snark) into zealous fanaticism (Boojum). Too often, in the end, some seekers of happiness even get burned.

Thomas Cranmer, a leader of the English Reformation and Archbishop of Canterbury during the reigns of Henry VIII, Edward VI, and Mary I was put on trial for treason and heresy and imprisoned. He was forced to make several recantations. In 1556 he was burned at the stake in by “Blood Mary”.

The Baker, the hero in "The Hunting of the Snark", left 42 boxes behind him, with his name painted clearly on each. A baker is exposed to heat. He answered to “Fry me!” or “Fritter my wig!” Intimate friends called him “Candle ends” and his enemies “Toasted cheese.” In his poem, Carroll gives us a very broad hint: This Baker got burned. We can see the final burning in Henry Holiday’s illustration to the last “fit” of the Snark poem (Fig. 1). In the circled area, a part of the Boojum seems to have seized the Baker’s wrist.

Fig. 2, shows the stake and the fire burning Cranmer and several other Protestant martyrs, a detail from the seventeenthcentury engraving "Faith’s Victorie in Rome’s Crueltie" by Thomas Jenner. In both images you see a hand in a fire. This is the sad end of the hero of "The Hunting of the Snark".

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