Academic literature on the topic 'Ursula Le Guin'

This thesis explores the nature and function of language as it is used in twentieth-century fantastic fiction, as represented by the work of C. S. Lewis and Ursula K. Le Guin. In it I argue that the anti-mimetic impulse behind the language of fantasy makes it a polemical, contentious mode, which situates itself against discourses (religious and scientific) that assume the existence of a reality to which language may be said to correspond in certain clearly understood, conventional ways. Both Lewis and Le Guin suggest, by contrast, that experiential reality is an arbitrary and shifting construct, although each writer has a very different attitude towards the category of the ‘real’ and the question of how it may best be articulated. Despite the fact that Lewis uses the language of authority and Le Guin the language of liberation, they both interrogate fundamental ethical, social, political and theological evaluative assumptions embedded in language, disrupting the rigidity that conventional usage confers upon words and the concomitant human tendency to submit unquestioningly to cultural conventions. Lewis challenges the modern, secular, materialist understanding of reality, contending that metaphor has the power to undermine post-secular fixed notions and reveal new semantic fields pertaining to what he understands as the ‘spiritual’. Le Guin celebrates human and non-human embodied existence, with its possibilities and limitations, refuting any transcendent reality. The thesis is divided into two parts. Part One deals with the ‘reactionary’ school of fantasy represented by Lewis. My contention is that Lewis’s Narnian Chronicles dramatise Owen Barfield’s theory of the concomitant evolution of human consciousness and language in relation to the phenomenal world. The three chapters in this part demonstrate that in the Narnia books Lewis represents initial forms of mythical, ‘participatory’ consciousness (as Barfield calls it) – that is, a world in which no linguistic or imaginative distinction is made between the human, animal, material and spiritual dimensions; followed by the loss of participation and the consequent alienation of human beings both from immaterial things and the environment; and concluding with the renewal of participation through a new use of language. Part Two is concerned with Le Guin’s sequence of fantasy novels about the imaginary world of Earthsea. Following Darko Suvin, I divide the sequence into two trilogies, which embody two contrasting responses to the conservative fantasy represented by the Narnia books. For me, the difference between these responses can best be understood through a close examination of Le Guin’s changing attitude to language in the First and Second Trilogies, which I undertake in four chapters. The first chapter explores Le Guin’s initial collusion with Lewis’s patriarchal politics, a collusion signalled by the rigid linguistic conventions and unchanging cultural practices of her imaginary world. The three final chapters deal with the Second Earthsea Trilogy, with particular emphasis on the last two books, since these have so far received little critical attention. In these books she deconstructs the earlier premises of her created world by finding new ways in which to represent the voices that had been excluded or marginalised in her previous trilogy, as well as in the work of her predecessors in fantasy. The thesis as a whole represents an effort to reassess the political implications of linguistic choices, and of attitudes to language, in twentieth-century fantastic fiction.

This thesis examines individual and societal action and activism in five science fiction and utopian novels by Ursula K. Le Guin, namely, The left hand of darkness, The word for world is forest, The lathe of heaven, The dispossessed, and Always coming home. Le Guin is a politically committed author whose ideological perspective is informed by feminism, Taoism, and anarchism, as well as a strong ecological awareness. These determine the structure of her fictional societies and the actions of her characters. Each novel is approached on its own terms, with the commentary adhering closely to the text. Individuals and their societies are conceived of as embodying different and conflicting ways of being and doing. The author is seen as an activist by virtue of her political commitment, especially in the case of the self-reflexive, self-critical Always coming home. Included in the Introduction are sections on: Tom Moylan's concept of the critical utopia, which tailors the utopian genre to fit modern views; Le Guin's concept of the yin utopia, one possible form of the critical utopia; and a short section on Taoism, familiarising the reader with concepts and terminology used in the thesis.

<p>Failed Feminism?: Ursula K. Le Guin’s novel Tehanu</p><p>The purpose of this essay is to show that Ursula K. LeGuin’s fantasy novel Tehanu instead of breaking away from traditional gender roles maintains them, despite the novel’s promises of change. I begin by showing the places where the possibilities of change are indicated, and then I use feminist criticism to show that there is no change in the gender roles.</p><p>I have examined the gender roles in Tehanu, by taking a closer look at the characters and the roles they have in the plot. Numerous critics claim that this novel is Le Guin’s attempt to revise her earlier, more traditional fantasy novels in the Earthsea trilogy, and that Tehanu works as a feminist reaction to the Earthsea trilogy. However, even though Le Guin makes the traditional patriarchal gender roles apparent to the unaware reader, the protagonists have internalised the patriarchal values of their society when the novel closes, which may be fairly disappointing to the reader who brings feminist awareness to the reading of novel. The women are depicted as caregivers, and the men are portrayed as the decision-makers. The gender roles are as traditional as they can be with Ged as the man who is capable to read the wizard’s books, with Tehanu who stays with her family and does not leave with the dragons, and with Tenar as the woman who takes care of the household.</p>

La présente thèse se propose de montrer comment, malgré une notable diversité dans la forme comme dans les thèmes, l'œuvre d'Ursula K. Le Guin offre une remarquable cohérence autour d'images et structures fondamentales. Partant d'une organisation de base, fondée sur une opposition binaire, la romancière fait émerger un troisième terme, élément de synthèse entre les deux autres. C'est ce que démontre le système des personnages qui, mettant en regard deux clans, donne la vedette à des figures d'ethnologues qui, tout à la fois, maintiennent l'équilibre entre deux cultures et permettent la création de réseaux. Ce principe s'étend à des représentations purement linguistiques Le Guin postule en effet l'existence de deux langues, la langue du père, langue du pouvoir, et celle de la mère, langue du dialogue. Ces deux modes d'expression, pourtant si différents, semblent pouvoir atteindre une harmonie dans l'émergence d'une forme tierce, la langue de l'Art, dans laquelle s'élabore discours fondamentalement mixte et où se conjuguent oralité et écriture, poésie et prose. Deux personnages illustrent ce principe : l'androgyne, qui permet de poser la question du sexe et de mettre en lumière les disparités sociales auxquelles conduisent les caractéristiques masculines ou féminines ; le dragon qui s'offre comme la synthèse idéale des sexes, et donne toute leur part au maternel et au féminin. Ce rêve de synthèse se retrouve également dans une série d'images récurrentes, comme notamment celle de la pierre virile et du réseau maternel, combinées de façon idéale dans des représentations fondées sur le modèle du piège à rêves amérindien, modèle qui se retrouve aussi bien dans la toile d'araignée que dans certaines formes de mise en scène de l'activité onirique. L'œuvre se présente ainsi comme une forme d'hommage au père et à la mère de la romancière, ethnologues réputés, et parallèlement comme une illustration de la voix de la différence décrite par Carol Gilligan<br>This work aims at showing how, despite a great diversity in the forms and the themes, Ursula K. Le Guin's work organises its coherence around fundamental images and structures. Founded on a basic binary opposition, the writer develops a third term, a synthesis of the two others. This is illustrated by the system of characterisation (of the protagonists) which stages two clans featuring anthropologists who maintain the equilibrium between the two cultures while developing the creation of networks. This principle extends to purely linguistic representations. Le Guin postulates the existence of two languages, the Father tongue, the language of power, and the Mother tongue, the language of dialogue. These two modes of expression, although very different, tend towards harmony in the birth of a third term, the Language of Art, in which oral and written literature, prose and poetry intermingle. Two characters serve to illustrate this: first, the androgyn underlines the problem of sex and highlights the social differences; second, resulting from sexual differentiation, the dragon represents the ideal synthesis of the two sexes, and shows the importance of the maternal and the feminine features. This dream of two into one is also present in a series of recurrent images, namely the masculine stone, and the maternal network, ideally united in representations based on Amerindian dreamcatchers, a model also illustrated by the cobweb and in forms staging dreams. The work is thus a homage to Ursula K. Le Guin's father and mother, well-known anthropologists, and also an illustration of Carol Gilligan's theory of a "different voice"

The thesis deals with the Utopian and dystopian aspects of Ursula K. Le Guin's The Dispossessed and Always Coming Home. To provide a basis for comparison with the endeavours of previous utopists, the first part is devoted to a historical account of literary Utopias, and to an examination of the signposts of the genre. This history is restricted to practical blueprints for the ideal commonwealth and excludes creations of pure fantasy. In tracing Utopian development from Plato to Wells, the influence of historical events and the mainstreams of thought, such as Renaissance humanism, the Reformation, the rising importance of science, the discovery of new lands, the Enlightenment, Locke's Theory of Perfectability, Bentham's utilitarianism, the Industrial Revolution, socialism, the French Revolution, Darwinism, and the conflict between capital and labour is demonstrated. It is also shown how the long-range results of the Russian Revolution and the two world wars shattered all Utopian visions, leading to the emergence of the dystopia, and how the author reversed this negative trend in the second part of the twentieth century. In a study of forms of Utopian presentation, the claim is made that The Dispossessed features the first Utopia that qualifies as a novel: not only does the author break with the genre's tradition of subordinating the characters to the proposal, she also creates the conflict necessary for novelistic structure by juxtaposing her positive societies with negative ones. In part two, the Utopias and dystopias of both books are examined, and their features compared to previous endeavours in the genre. The observation is made that although the author favours anarchism as a political theory, she is more deeply committed to the Chinese philosophy of Taoism, seeing in its ideals the only way to a harmonious and just existence for all. In order to prove her point, Le Guin renders her Utopias less than perfect, placing one society into an inhospitable environment and showing the other as suffering from genetic damage; this suggests that the ideal life does not rest in societal organization or beneficent surroundings, but in the minds of the inhabitants: this frame of mind—if not inherent in a culture—can be achieved by living in accordance with the tao. Lastly, an effort is made to determine the anthropological models upon which Utopian proposals are constructed. The theory is put forth that all non-governed, egalitarian Utopias represent a return to the societal arrangements of early man, when his communities were still small and decentralized, and before occupational specialization began to set in; that all democratic forms of government are taken from the Greek examples, that More's Utopia might well have been modelled on the Athenian clans of the pre-Cleisthenes era, and that the Kesh society of Always Coming Home is based exclusively on the kinship systems of the Pueblo Indians of the American Southwest.<br>Arts, Faculty of<br>English, Department of<br>Graduate

Thesis (D.A.)--Illinois State University, 1996.<br>Title from title page screen, viewed May 19, 2006. Dissertation Committee: Roberta Seelinger Trites (chair), Jan C. Susma, Janice W. Neuleib. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 218-234) and abstract. Also available in print.

Il presente elaborato ha lo scopo di proporre una traduzione di tre brani scelti da Words Are My Matter, raccolta di saggi, discorsi e recensioni di Ursula K. Le Guin. Ai cenni biografici seguirà una panoramica delle opere, soprattutto di fantascienza, e delle idee riguardo alla narrativa di genere, al linguaggio, alla situazione delle donne scrittrici di science fiction. La contestualizzazione teorica verterà perciò sulla narrativa di genere e in particolare sulla fantascienza, con riferimenti allo sviluppo della stessa e alla traduzione fantascientifica in Italia. Il commento alla traduzione si prefigge infine di esplicare le scelte traduttive, avvalendosi anche delle problematiche presentate sopra.