page_title: The Mouse's Tale
section_title: Content
hierarchical_section_title: The Mouse's Tale / Content
caption_attribution_description: English: A reproduction of "The Mouse's Tale", p.36 in the 1865 edition of Lewis Carroll's The Adventures of Alice in Wonderland
context_page_description: "The Mouse's Tale" is a shaped poem by Lewis Carroll which appears in his 1865 novel Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. Though no formal title for the poem is given in the text, the chapter title refers to "A Long Tale" and the Mouse introduces it by saying, "Mine is a long and sad tale!" As well as the contribution of typography to illustrate the intended pun in this title, artists later made the intention clear as well. Translators of the story also encountered difficulty in conveying the meaning there, part of which was not recognised until well over a century later.
context_section_description: During the course of the story's third chapter, a Mouse offers to tell Alice his history. "Mine is a long and a sad tale!" he begins, making Alice think that it means its tail, so that she pictures its recitation in the form of a twisted, tail-like shape.
  In the tale, the Mouse (speaking of itself in the third person) explains how a cur called Fury proposes the pastime of condemning it to death, himself serving as both judge and jury. "The Mouse's Tale" thus anticipates the nonsense trial at the end of the novel:
  "Fury said to a mouse, that he met in the house, 'Let us both go to law: I will prosecute you - Come, I'll take no denial; We must have a trial: For really this morning I've nothing to do.' Said the mouse to the cur, 'Such a trial, dear Sir, with no jury or judge, would be wasting our breath.' 'I'll be judge, I'll be jury,' Said cunning old Fury: 'I'll try the whole cause, and condemn you to death.'"
  Although the Mouse claims that the "tale" will explain why he hates cats and dogs, the only villain in the printed poem is a dog; there is no actual explanation for the Mouse's animosity toward cats.  However, Alice's Adventures Under Ground, the 1863 handwritten version of Alice in Wonderland, contains a different poem at this point (beginning, "We lived beneath the mat,/ Warm and snug and fat./ But one woe & that/ Was the cat!") which includes both cats and dogs as the enemies of the mice.
caption: The printed version of "The Mouse's Tale", p.36 in the 1865 edition of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
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