Syftet med studien har varit att se vilka funktioner intertextualiteten i Lemony Snickets serie A series of unfortunate events har och vad författaren uppnår med den. Studien studerar seriens intertextualitet på olika nivåer som bär olika funktioner. Med hjälp av Pierre Bourdieus teori om kulturellt kapital, Aleida Assmanns teori om kulturellt minne och Harold Blooms tankar kring den västerländska kanon diskuteras intertextualitetens nivåer och dess betydelser. Av dessa intertexter kan kulturellt kapital läsas samt en tro om den goda litteraturen och den goda läsningen. Studien lyfter fram Snickets verk som en serie som förhåller sig till barnlitterära traditioner i sin form men använder sig av vuxenlitteraturens referenser för att förhöja statusen av serien såväl som barnboken.

This thesis explores the themes of hope, empowerment, and belonging in Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events. Using three different frameworks, I analyze the portrayal of interconnected senses of hope, empowerment, and belonging in the texts through the Baudelaire orphans, and their promotion of the same in the child reader. C.R. Snyder’s psychological hope theory is used to analyze how hope is created in the child protagonists and encouraged in the child reader, through finding pathways to their goals and the will to utilize them. Eliza T. Dresang’s Radical Change theory provides a framework for exploring how child empowerment functions in the texts, which is largely connected to the pursuit of knowledge and autodidacticism. Lastly, I use the role of literary orphanhood, changing concepts of family, and sociological frameworks for belonging to address how the Baudelaire orphans, and the child reader, find home and belonging outside of the idealized nuclear family—namely through shared social locations, social solidarities, and a symbolic reunification of the Baudelaire family. Moreover, I analyze the role of the Gothic and what MariaNikolajeva calls aetonormativity—adult normativity that Others children—in creating the hopeless and disempowering conditions that paradoxically make way for the development of hope, empowerment, and belonging.

The thesis deals with the interpretation of Series of Unfortunate Events written by an American author Lemony Snicket and Joanne K. Rowling´s story about Harry Potter. The analysis is focused on the moral and ethical aspects of individual motifs and symbols, as well as on the importance of human values in the behaviour of main characters. Some of the main protagonist were analysed according to their ability to spread good or evil, and therefore their influence on the young reader. The most important aspect was the good will of characters according to the principles of Lévinas' ethics while the self-sacrifice of the heroes is considered the highest moral value.