The works of Lewis Carroll, and in particular Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass, cannot be read without noticing the author's mastery of wit. The creativity and insight that permeates the humor in these texts is so clever and artful that the parody, wordplay, and nonsense are themselves the subject of many critical essays. Most of the literature on the subject claims one of two things: either that the humor in his writings is inspired by his mathematical inclinations, or that it is a byproduct of an astonishing innate linguistic aptitude. It seems, however, that these two approaches are motivated by the same analysis and that the concepts underlying mathematical and linguistic thinking are equivalent. Helena M. Pycior's essay “At the Intersection of Mathematics and Humor: Lewis Carroll's Alices and Symbolical Algebra” attempts to explain Carroll's ingenuity through concepts of Symbolic Algebra (which today is more commonly known as simply Symbolic Algebra or included in related topic, Abstract Algebra). The first section of the essay begins with a rather detailed history of the development of Symbolic Algebra and outlines some of the concepts addressed by the topic. Pycior deals very little with Carroll in the first two-thirds of the article, focusing instead on George Peacock, Augustus De Morgan, and William Frend, all accomplished mathematicians. Pycior ultimately connects Carroll to the others by emphasizing their common interests and influences. George Peacock was the mathematician who first "chose to redefine algebra as a science dealing with indefinite signs and symbols, governed by laws created by the mathematician." (Pycior 152) This redefinition was necessary, because in previous years... half of the article... exam subjects in abstract algebra and linguistics respectively. Since there are very few examples in Lewis Carroll's Alice books explicitly dealing exclusively with mathematics or exclusively with linguistics, the arguments in the two cited articles could easily be revised to be the same: that Lewis Carroll had the kind of mind that thought naturally along the conceptual lines shared by mathematics and linguistics, and that this way of thinking is immediately evident in his works. Works Cited Carroll, Lewis. "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland." Alice in Wonderland. New York, NY: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., 1971. 1-99. Nilsen, Don L.F. "The Linguistic Humor of Lewis Carroll." Thalia: Studies in Literary Humor (1988): 35-41.Pycior, Helena M. "At the Intersection of Mathematics and Humor: Lewis Carroll's Alice and Symbolic Algebra." Autumn of Victorian Studies 1984: 149-70.