Lewis Carroll

A Tangled Tale (Annotated) Lewis Carroll

Differentiated book- It has a historical context with research of the time-The purpose of realizing this historical context is to approach the understanding of a historical epoch from the elements provided by the text. Hence the importance of placing the document in context. It is necessary to unravel what its author or authors have said, how it has been said, when, why and where, always relating it to its historical moment. A Tangled Tale is a collection of 10 short humorous stories by Lewis Carroll (Charles Lutwidge Dodgson), published serially between April 1880 and March 1885 in The Monthly Packet magazine. Arthur B. Frost added illustrations when the series was printed in book form. The stories, or knots as Carroll calls them, present mathematical problems. In a later issue, Carroll gives the solution to a Knot and discusses the readers' responses. The mathematical interpretations of knots are not always easy. Teasing from readers who responded wrongly, giving their names, was not always well received. In the preface to the December 1885 book, Carroll writes: The intention of the writer was to embody in each Knot (like medicine so skillfully, but ineffectively, hidden in the jam of our early childhood) one or more mathematical questions, in Arithmetic, Algebra or Geometry, as the case may be, for fun., and possible edification, of the fair readers of that magazine.