Tales of times to come in Marissa Meyer’s The Lunar Chronicles: the contribution of fairy tales in the transglossic hour

Abstract

The focus of this article is on the YA series by Marissa Meyer, collectively known as The Lunar Chronicles (2012-2015) and comprised of the main novels Cinder, Scarlet, Cress, and Winter. Corollary books complete Meyer’s fairytale space opera: Fairest (2015b) is a prequel to Cinder, detailing the earlier life of the main antagonist, Queen Levana, while Stars Above (2016) is a collection of short stories set within the same fictional universe. The main cast of characters embody otherness in one way or another, and this is often explored in depth in their own novel as well as to further their character development in the main storyline. This article will briefly touch on the characters as they become relevant, but most of the analysis focuses on the main overarching character, Cinder, and antagonist, Queen Levana. However, by virtue of their proximity to Cinder’s story, two of the other characters are also caught in the analysis: the android Iko, and Winter, the Snow White stand-in of the series. Cinder and Winter form the core of this study, supplemented by canonical information within the rest of The Lunar Chronicles material. The main theoretical framework is provided by Shaw & Upstone’s The Transglossic, but the analysis also draws on the work of Italian writer and educator Gianni Rodari in Grammatica della Fantasia.