Part of
Where is Adaptation?: Mapping cultures, texts, and contextsEdited by Casie Hermansson and Janet Zepernick
[FILLM Studies in Languages and Literatures 9] 2018
► pp. 343–364
Edited by Casie Hermansson and Janet Zepernick
[FILLM Studies in Languages and Literatures 9] 2018
► pp. 343–364
Chapter 20Where does the “meta” go in adapting children’s metafiction to the screen?
The case of “A Series of Unfortunate Events”
Article outline
- Considering the metafictional source: Daniel Handler’s A Series of Unfortunate Events
- Metafilmic adaptation: Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events (2004)
- Explicit meta-adaptation: Netflix’s A Series of Unfortunate Events (2017)
- Conclusion
-
Notes -
References
References
Anstey, Michèle
2002 “ ‘It’s Not All Black and White’: Postmodern Picture Books and New Literacies.” Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy 45 (6): 444–457. [URL].
Austin, Sara
2013 “Performative Metafiction: Lemony Snicket, Daniel Handler and The End of A Series of Unfortunate Events
.” The Looking Glass: New Perspectives on Children’s Literature 17 (1). [URL].
Bayer, Gerd
2010 “On Filming Metafiction: John Fowles’s Unpublished ‘The Last Chapter’ and the Road to Postmodern Cinema.” English Studies 91 (8): 893–906.
Buchbinder, David
2011 “From ‘Wizard’ to ‘Wicked’: Adaptation Theory and Young Adult Fiction.” In Contemporary Children’s Literature and Film: Engaging with Theory, edited by Kerry Mallan and Clare Bradford, 127–146. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Bullen, Elizabeth E.
2008 “Power of Darkness: Narrative and Biographical Reflexivity in A Series of Unfortunate Events
.” International Research in Children’s Literature 1 (2): 200–212.
Butt, Bruce
2003 “ ‘He’s Behind You!’: Reflections on Repetition and Predictability in Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events.” Children’s Literature in Education 34 (4): 277–286.
Cadden, Mike
2005 “Children’s Stories (Narratives Written for Children).” In Routledge Encyclopedia of Narrative Theory, edited by David Herman, Manfred Jahn, and Marie-Laure Ryan, 59–60. New York: Routledge.
Cartmell, Deborah
2007 “Adapting Children’s Literature.” In The Cambridge Companion to Literature on Screen, edited by Deborah Cartmell and Imelda Whelehan, 167–180. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Cartmell, Deborah and Imelda Whelehan
2005 “Harry Potter and the Fidelity Debate.” In Books in Motion: Adaptation, Intertextuality, Authorship, edited by Mireia Aragay, 37–49. Amsterdam: Rodopi.
Cox, Carole
1982 “Children’s Films: The Literature Connection.” Children’s Literature Association Quarterly 7 (3): 10–13.
Dällenbach, Lucien
1989 The Mirror in the Text. Translated by Jeremy Whiteley and Emma Hughes. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Dresang, Eliza T.
1999 Radical Change: Books for Youth in a Digital Age. New York: H.W. Wilson.
Ebert, Roger
2004 A Review of “Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events.” Roger Ebert, December 16. [URL].
Eidsvik, Charles
(1974) 1977 “Soft Edges: The Art of Literature, the Medium of Film.” In Film and/as Literature, edited by John Harrington, 306–313. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.
Geraghty, Christine
2008 Now a Major Motion Picture: Film Adaptations of Literature and Drama. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield.
(2009) 2012 “Foregrounding the Media: Atonement (2007) as an Adaptation.” In A Companion to Literature, Film, and Adaptation, edited by Deborah Cartmell, 359–373. Chichester: Wiley Blackwell.
Goldstone, Bette P.
2001–2002 “Whaz Up with Our Books? Changing Picture Book Codes and Teaching Implications.” The Reading Teacher 55 (4): 362–370. [URL].
Handler, Daniel
1999a The Bad Beginning. New York: HarperCollins.
1999b The Reptile Room. New York: HarperCollins.
2000a The Wide Window. New York: HarperCollins.
2000b The Miserable Mill. New York: HarperCollins.
2001 The Vile Village. New York: HarperCollins.
2006 The End. New York: HarperCollins.
Hauthal, Janine
2009 “When Metadrama is Turned into Metafilm: A Media-Comparative Approach to Metareference,” In Metareference in the Arts and Media: Theory and Case Studies, edited by Werner Wolf, 569–589. Amsterdam: Rodopi.
Hintz, Carrie and Eric L. Tribunella
2013 Reading Children’s Literature: A Critical Introduction. Boston: Bedford St. Martin’s.
Hutcheon, Linda
1980 Narcissistic Narrative: The Metafictional Paradox. New York: Methuen.
Knickerbocker, Joan L. and Martha A. Brueggeman
2008 “Making Room on the Shelf: The Place of Postmodern Young Adult Novels in the Curriculum.” American Secondary Education 37 (1): 65–79.
Kümmerling-Meibauer, Bettina
2013 “Paratexts in Children’s Films and the Concept of Meta-Filmic Awareness.” Journal of Educational Memory, Media, and Society 5 (2): 108–123.
Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events
2004 Dir. Brad Silberling. Film. Paramount Pictures.
Lewis, C. S.
(1950) 1998 The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. London: HarperCollins.
The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe
2005 Dir. Andrew Adamson. Film. Walden Media, Walt Disney Pictures.
Mackey, Margaret
1990 “Metafiction for Beginners: Allan Ahlberg’s ‘Ten in a Bed.’” Children’s Literature in Education 21 (3): 179–187.
Mallan, Kerry and Clare Bradford
2011 Contemporary Children’s Literature and Film: Engaging with Theory. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Martin, Cathlena
2009 “Charlotte’s Weblog: Media Transformation and the Intertextual Web of Children’s Culture.” In Adaptation in Contemporary Culture: Textual Infidelities, edited by Rachel Carroll, 85–95. London: Continuum.
McAllister, Cheryl
2009 “Oversimplification in the Adaptation of Children’s Literature to Film.” Master’s Thesis. University of Alberta, Canada.
McAlone, Nathan
2017 “Critics Say Netflix is Bad for Movies: Here’s What They are Missing About its Strategy.” Business Insider, May 22. [URL].
McCallum, Robyn
2008 “Would I Lie to You? Metalepsis and Modal Disruption in Some ‘True’ Fairy Tales.” In Postmodern Picturebooks: Play, Parody, and Self-Referentiality, edited by Lawrence R. Sipe and Sylvia Pantaleo, 180–192. New York: Routledge.
Moss, Joyce and George Wilson
eds. 1992 From Page to Screen: Children’s and Young Adult Books on Film and Video. Detroit, MI: Gale Research.
Nelson, Claudia
2006 “Writing the Reader: The Literary Child in and Beyond the Book.” Children’s Literature Association Quarterly 31 (2): 222–236.
Netflix Subscriber List
2017 “Coming soon … an extremely upsetting new show from Netflix.” January 6. Email.
Nikolajeva, Maria
1998 “Exit Children’s Literature?” The Lion and the Unicorn 22 (2): 221–236.
Nikolajeva, Maria and Carole Scott
2001 How Picturebooks Work. New York: Garland.
Ousley, Laurie
2007 “‘Well-Read People are Less Likely to be Evil’: Intellectual Development and Justice in Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events
.” In To See the Wizard: Politics and the Literature of Children, edited by Laurie Ousley, 297–314. Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars.
Pantaleo, Sylvia
2004 “Young Children Interpret the Metafictive in Anthony Browne’s Voices in the Park.” Journal of Early Childhood Literacy 4 (2): 211–233.
2005 “Young Children Engage with the Metafictive in Picture Books.” Australian Journal of Language and Literacy 28 (1): 19–37.
2006 “Readers and Writers as Intertexts: Exploring the Intertextualities in Student Writing.” Australian Journal of Language and Literacy 29 (2): 163–181.
2009 “The Influence of Postmodern Picturebooks on Three Boys’ Narrative Competence.” Australian Journal of Language and Literacy 32 (3): 191–210.
2010 “Mutinous Fiction: Narrative and Illustrative Metalepsis in Three Postmodern Picturebooks.” Children’s Literature in Education 41 (1): 12–27.
2014 “The Metafictive Nature of Postmodern Picturebooks.” The Reading Teacher 67 (5): 324–332.
paramitch
2016 Untitled comment on Ebert, Review of Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events
. October 14. [URL].
Philpot, Don K.
2005 “Children’s Metafiction, Readers and Reading: Building Thematic Models of Narrative Comprehension.” Children’s Literature in Education 36 (2): 141–159.
Russell, Danielle
2010 “Familiarity Breeds a Following: Transcending the Formulaic in the Snicket Series.” In Telling Children’s Stories, edited by Mike Cadden, 22–43. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press.
A Series of Unfortunate Events
2017 Dir. Barry Sonnenfeld Mark Palansky and Bo Welch. Television. Netflix.
Singerman, Alan J.
2001 “
Jacques le fataliste on Film: From Metafiction to Metacinema.” In Eighteenth-Century Fiction on Screen, edited by Robert Mayer, 123–138. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Robert Stam
1992 Reflexivity in Film and Literature: From Don Quixote to Jean-Luc Godard. New York: Columbia University Press.
2005 Literature through Film: Realism, Magic and the Art of Adaptation. Oxford: Blackwell.
Sutherland-Smith, Wendy
2002 “Weaving the Literacy Web: Changes in Reading from Page to Screen.” The Reading Teacher 55 (7): 662–669. [URL].
Sutton, Roger
2004 “ ‘The Red Book’ and ‘Into the Forest’: Metafiction for Beginners.” The New York Times Book Review, November 14. [URL].
Tartaglione, Nancy
2017 “A Fest Divided: Netflix Controversy Clouds Cannes; Will France Embrace Change?” Deadline, May 19. [URL].
Tiffany, Kaitlyn
2017 “Netflix CEO Addresses Cannes Controversy: ‘Sometimes the Establishment is Clumsy.’ He also called Netflix ‘the insurgents.’” TheVerge, May 31. [URL].
Trites, Roberta Seelinger
1994 “Manifold Narratives: Metafiction and Ideology in Picture Books.” Children’s Literature in Education 25 (4): 225–242.
Waugh, Patricia
1984 Metafiction: The Theory and Practice of Self-Conscious Fiction. New York: Methen.
Wojcik-Andrews, Ian
2000 Children’s Films: History, Ideology, Pedagogy, Theory. New York: Garland.
Voigts-Virchow, Eckart
2009 “Metadaptation: Adaptation and Intermediality – Cock and Bull.” Journal of Adaptation in Film & Performance 2 (2): 137–152.
Young, Brian Patrick
2011 “Cinematic Reflexivity”: Postmodernism and the Contemporary Metafilm. PhD Diss. University of California Davis.
Cited by
Cited by 1 other publications
Hunter, Madeleine
2019. In Medias Res: The Remediation of Time in Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events. In The Palgrave Handbook of Children's Film and Television, ► pp. 75 ff. 
This list is based on CrossRef data as of 22 april 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.