A CRITICAL-HISTORIOGRAPHIC APPROACH ON THE CONTROVERSIAL RECEPTION OF SHIRLEY JACKSON’S SHORT STORY THE LOTTERY

The present text is an annotated review of the literature that surrounds the ideological phenomenon that stamped the controversial reception of American writer Shirley Jackson’s short story The Lottery. The accursed story’s critical fortune is presented and discussed, at an introductory level, in order to shed light on the episode that beleaguers its publication in the celebrated literary magazine New Yorker in 1948. The intention is, through a critical-historiographic approach, to help readers understand the reasons and causes that have stirred such widespread public outrage, such profuse resentment and such awed curiosity towards this ill-fated short story and its obscure writer.