Entre la intención y la interpretación: Un estudio de la ironía en una serie de catastróficas desdichas

Abstract

This article seeks to examine the use of irony within the works of Lemony Snicket, specifically looking at his series of thirteen novels known as A Series of Unfortunate Events, so as to inquire into the possible reception and understanding of these texts by a juvenile reader. “The theoretical framework uses as its base Roman Ingarden's proposal of the literary work of art as an intentional object that is composed of four strata which work together to create something bigger than the sum of its parts. To this is added Linda Hutcheons theory on irony in which she argues that irony is a polyphonic and highly slippery rhetorical form. An analytical reading of the text continues, using these two authors to help identify markers of irony within each stratum. “These markers are looked at to examine the possible effects they might instigate among different readers, and the necessary background a reader must have to be able to perceive them, in this way also integrating Wolfgang Iser's reader-response theory into the discussion of whether juvenile readers are capable of perceiving irony.