Frank Richard Stockton's 'The Lady Or The Tiger?'

Frank Richard Stockton was born April 5, 1834. Popular American literature in the decades leading to the twentieth century and the Pre-Raphaelites influenced Stockton’s most famous story “The Lady or the Tiger?”
During the nineteenth century, popular American literature included plenty of adventure novels and humorous works which often depicted the emerging American culture. Another popular form was the simple short story with a trick ending, like O. Henry’s “The Gift of the Magi.” Stockton was considered a humorist, and his stories often combined elements of humor with a trick ending. In “The Lady or the Tiger,” the king built an arena for punishing criminals. When the king discovers his beautiful daughter, which he adores, has secretly fallen …show more content…
The Pre-Raphaelites’ name came from their love for the idealized art of the era before Raphael, an Italian master of the High Renaissance. This artistic movement influenced writers as well. Writers who were familiar with the Pre-Raphaelites gained popularity through works that had strong elements of fantasy to it, like Lewis Carroll’s Alice in wonderland. Stockton’s “The Lady, or the Tiger?” was influenced by the Pre-Raphaelites, with its fairy-tale overtones of a kingdom, a princess, and a valiant suitor. Also Stockton’s stories for children show some influence by the Pre-Raphaelites. Unlike the Pre-Raphaelite’s paintings, however, the fantasy literature of the day often included elements of absurdity or irony, as any reader of Lewis Carroll knows. Golemba summarized one of Stockton’s children’s stories: “after the heroine is beheaded inadvertently by the hero, her head is magically reattached to her body—but backwards.” Such irreverence was typical of American humorists, whose displeasure of the modern, mechanized world was to resort to absurdity rather than evoke a long bygone era of art and literature, as was the practice of the Pre-Raphaelites.
As the twentieth-century dawned, and as Stockton feared, his work became

Show More

Frank Richard Stockton's 'The Lady Or The Tiger?'

Related Documents: Frank Richard Stockton's 'The Lady Or The Tiger?'

Comparing The Most Dangerous Game And Frank Stockton