Abstract
This chapter analyses the Gothic in Lemony Snicket’s major works, A Series of Unfortunate Events, and explores how certain themes are adapted for children’s fiction. Iglesias addresses in turn different elements that could be analysed as Gothic: the frame tale structure of the novels, together with the devices used to achieve verisimilitude throughout the text (letters, dedications, etc.) and the unreliability of the post-modern narrator and author figure of Lemony Snicket. Lastly, the analysis focuses on ideas of cosmic horror and haunting through the omnipresent and omnipotent role of the villain, Count Olaf, and his (evil) influence on the lives of the protagonists. Iglesias concludes that through traits of the gothic genre, Snicket introduces themes that are typically ‘adult’ to young readers.
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Bibliography
Primary Sources
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Baldick, Chris, The Oxford Dictionary of Literary Terms (Oxford, UK, 1990), 347.
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Iglesias-Plester, V. (2020). Lemony Snicket. In: Bloom, C. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Contemporary Gothic. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-33136-8_38
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-33136-8_38
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