Performative Metafiction: Lemony Snicket, Daniel Handler and The End of <i>A Series of Unfortunate Events</i>

  • Sara Austin Kansas State University

Abstract

In “Performative Metafiction: Lemony Snicket, Daniel Handler, and The End of A Series of Unfortunate Events,” Sara Austin looks at the metafictional aspect of Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events, with particular emphasis on the series’ final volume, The End. She explores the occasional uneasy relationship between the series narrator and “author,” Lemony Snicket, and the actual author, Daniel Handler. Handler’s entirely pseudonymous role in the publishing process creates a tension within the series’ narrative authority, raising issues that, often, adults do not trust children to understand. The popularity of the series, particularly in the United States, belies assumptions that children will neither understand nor enjoy books that raise more questions about the plot and characters than they answer, or that utterly fail to offer the “happily-ever-after” convention that so dominates the worlds of children’s publishing.

Author Biography

Sara Austin, Kansas State University
Sara Austin recently received a Master of Arts degree in English from Kansas State University. She is currently working on representations of women’s bodies and the construction of national identity in Ramayana comic books. Her primary research interests include sexuality and gender, post-colonial literature, and power relationships in children’s texts.
Issue
Vol. 17 No. 1 (2013)
Section
Alice's Academy
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