1) How is science fiction different from fantasy, according to Le Guinn?
2) How does Attebery (1980) define Fantasy? Find at least five definitions?
3) In what ways does Tax (2002) suggest Earthsea may still be relevant today?
4) What are some archetypes that often recur in fantasy fiction? Give examples from Earthsea and other fantasy works you might know.
5) In what way is The Wizard of Earthsea a ‘coming of age’ novel? Does it escape from the ‘boy’s own adventure’ story? How are Ged’s adventures different from Tintin’s?
"In what way is The Wizard of Earthsea a ‘coming of age’ novel? Does it escape from the ‘boy’s own adventure’ story? How are Ged’s adventures different from Tintin’s?"
ReplyDeleteThe Wizard of Earthsea is a novel about a boy named Ged whose story circulates around his transition of boy to man. The novel is a coming of age story, where it tracks how Ged grows as a wizard and a man. Through the book, Ged learns of his powers from a young age, playing around in farm land. This than escalates to Ged saving his village from a pack of warmongering outlaws who try to raid their village. Ged saves the town due to his powers with magic and wizardry at a young age of 12. From here on Ged's life becomes revolved around wizardry. He gets tutored by an Archmage for a few years than gets sent to a school of wizardry, and practices what he learns for time to come. When Ged makes a mistake and lets his ego become to proud, he lets a shadow creature free into the earth. Damaging his ego, killing an Archmage in the process, and tampering with his all important studies. This is Ged's biggest milestone since he first saved his town from demolition. But this time, it is not a positive milestone. Ged needs to learn from his mistake, as it will haunt him for his lifetime if he does not. Through Ged's adventures and years of learning and crafting his abilities, he grows. Ged grows wise in a short amount of time, which resembles his 'coming of age'. Ged comes of age when he leaves the safe training island of Roke, and faces his problems head on. He has obstacles to overcome, but Ged learns from them and takes what he can from his experiences. Whilst Ged is protecting a vulnerable land from vicious dragons, he makes his own choice (which will soon be seen as escaping from his adventure story) to speed up the process of his life, when he goes to fight the dragons and gains power over them. This is what Ged wanted. Ged wanted to gain power over the dragons, as to complete his first task of taking care of the village, as to focus on his painful task of facing the shadow monster.
(Part 1)
When Ged tries to run from the shadow monster, its as if the monster is feeding off of his fear, and as he grows more fearful over time, the monster gets closer to him. To me, this part in Ged's life when he is running from his fears is when the story escapes from the boys adventure story. It does not become Ged making his own path, it becomes Ged looking for a way out. Which side tracks from his true path. This is the power that the shadow possess'. To sidetrack Ged from his growth. But within being sidetracked, he also does some growing. He grows into a man. Slightly slower than expected, but he gets there. When Ged reaches that point on the island of Osskil. He becomes weary of the people around him, and starts to take what they say with a grain of salt. When Ged transforms into an eagle to escape from the island of Osskil and the evil stone, he becomes a man. And from there on basically decides to hunt the shadow. He has had enough. This when Ged is no longer the apprentice to life, but he is deciding his own life. He's making the call of what he wants to do. No more running from his mistakes. He faces them front on, chases the shadow down with an old friend named Vetch, and absorbs the shadow into himself, due to his power over mind. Ged has become complete in the process and can no focus on improving himself. According to Tax, (2002) people need to feel a connection to the characters to be able to relate and get drawn into the story.
ReplyDeleteThe differences between Ged's adventures and Tintin's adventures are mostly inner ones. They both have tasks to complete in whole, but the differences lye in how they get inspiration to complete them. Ged has a task of saving himself throughout the narrative, which he completes through saving other people and showing traits of living a noble lifestyle. Whilst Tintin sees something that shouldn't be going on and wants to eliminate the issue. Tintin is driven and determined to make a stop to a selfish evil group of people whom's task is to sell drugs. Ged's adventure is one that circulates around his fear, and ho he builds in character and strength, whilst Tintin travels and has a goal of doing right from the beginning. He does not have to deal with any major inner termoil like Ged does. But Ged does right for others through his ultimate goal of doing right for himself.
References:
Le Guinn, U. (1993; 1968). A Wizard of Earthsea. London: Penguin.
Tax, M. (Jan 28, 2002). Year of Harry Potter, Enter the Dragon. In The Nation.
1) How is science fiction different from fantasy, according to Le Guin?
ReplyDeleteA Wizard of Earthsea is a young adult fantasy novel written by the American author Ursula K. Le Guin, first published by the small press Parnassus in 1968. Regarded as a classic of fantasy and children's literature, the novel has been widely influential within the genre of fantasy.
The story is set in the fictional archipelago of Earthsea, the story centers around a young mage named Ged, born in a village on the island of Gont. Displaying great power while still a boy, he joins the school of wizardry, where his prickly nature drives him into conflict with one of his fellows. During a magical duel, Ged's spell goes awry and releases a shadow creature that attacks him. The novel follows his journey as he seeks to be free of the creature (Wikipedia).
According to Oxford dictionary, “science fiction means fiction based on imagined future scientific or technological advances and major social or environmental changes, frequently portraying space or time travel and life on other planets.”
Le Guin explains “what validates fiction is plausibility, which it creates for itself, most notably through accurate, honest observation of the world it creates.” Most present day fiction doesn't contradict the reality, and the novel especially has a tendency to be clearly true. What makes real world and fictional world distinctive is characterizing the normal for authenticity. It isn't what characteristic of fiction. Fiction is the thing that didn't occur or made up (Le Guin, 2005).
According to Le Guin, “Most science fiction pretends that the future is the present or the past, and then tells us what happened in it. Why? Because ‘the future’ is a black page, and imagination can write anything it likes on it.” Science fiction works like a realistic fiction because realism and science fiction both employ plausibility to win the reader’s consent to the fiction. “Science fiction is the modern mythology” (Le Guin & Wood, 1979).
According to Oxford dictionary, “fantasy means the faculty or activity of imagining impossible or improbable things. Another meaning would be a genre of imaginative fiction involving magic and adventure, especially in a setting other than the real world.”
According to Le Guin, “Fantasy is significantly more straightforward in its fictionality than either realism or sci-fi.” Its agreement with the peruser is an alternate one. There is no consent to imagine that its story happened, or might have happened, or may ever happen. Its development is radical. With the educated assent of the peruser, dream purposely damages credibility in the feeling of compatibility with the world outside the story (Le Guin, 2005) (Le Guin & Wood, 1979).
According to Mellor (2015), explained Le Guin has nourished imaginative literature for decades with fine, precise prose and political exploration. While she’s also spent years clear-headedly defending sci-fi and fantasy against the kind of people who turn up their noses up at books with dragons on their covers and maps on their title pages. She’ll put anyone straight on the myopic assumption that “the silliest realist was better than Tolkien” (Mellor, 2005).
Reference:
English Oxford Living Dictionary. Retrieved 19 October 2017 from: https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/
Le Guin, U.K. (2005). Plausibility revisited: Wha hoppen and what didn't. Retrieved from: http://www.ursulakleguin.com/PlausibilityRevisited.html
Le Guin, U.K. & Wood, S. (1979). The language of the night: Essays on fantasy and science fiction. New York: Perigee Books.
Mellor, L. (2015). Ursula Le Guin interview: Sci-fi and fantasy snobbery, adaptations & trouble-making. Retrieved from: http://www.denofgeek.com/books-comics/ursula-le-guin/34829/ursula-le-guin-interview-sci-fi-and-fantasy-snobbery-adaptations-trouble-making
Wikipedia: A wizard of earthsea. Retrieved 19 October 2017 from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Wizard_of_Earthsea
How is science fiction different from fantasy, according to Le Guinn?
ReplyDeleteAccording to Le Guin (2005), “in fiction, the story is not what happened. Fiction didn’t happen”. Fiction is not based on the past or the future but rather is set on plausibility, that it creates for itself through accurate and honest observations of the world it creates. Le Guin (2015) describes fiction as “what did not happen but realistic fiction pretends that it did”. Fiction creates characters and places through observation that add up together and makes readers connect to them and imagine the made-up world as real as the characters, places, and details based on plausibility, and true accurate and observation with intuition of reality is what makes the readers connect and believe the fictional story.
Fiction differs from science-fiction as “science-fiction pretends that the future is the present or the past, and tells us what happened in it” (Le Guin, 2015). This might be because this allows science-fiction to use a blank page and create a world through imagination explaining this and providing reasoning for things that might never happen. This would be easy to do in science-fiction as the future is like wet clay that could be moulded to one’s imagination. This could be why majority of the time science-fiction stories are based on the future as todays world believes in facts and presenting something which is highly unlikely to happen will be dismissed by the public almost immediately (Le Guin, 2015).
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DeleteReference:
DeleteLe Guin, U.K. (2005). Plausibility revisited: Wha hoppen and what didn't. Retrieved from: http://www.ursulakleguin.com/PlausibilityRevisited.html
Questions 1 and 2...
ReplyDeleteWhat is fantasy? According to Le Guinn, fantasy is a style, a form, a perspective and an art. Fantasy can be eccentric or mainstream or anything you want it to be as long as it offers a compelling inauguration and creation of impracticality or an irrational fantasy that your mind constructs that of which adheres to logic and is rhetorical. Whatever the narrative may be, it should present a perspective of outer reality, which the narrative then aims to challenge. Le Guinn also mentions that a story that incorporates a breach of what the writer vividly trusts to be true reality, and makes up a large component of the story is fantasy. Lastly Le Guinn states that fantasy can include beings, magical objects or events that we know do not exist in real life. These can include flying horses, dragons, shape shifters, hats, castles or two people swapping heads. He goes on to say that fantasy aims to look at these impracticalities as if they actually exist and not judge it with our “intellectual understandings” of how the world works.
According to Le Guinn, science fiction focuses too much on persuading people that its apparent impracticalities can be explained if we just distance ourselves from what we already know based on the world and science where as fantasy works hard to maintain the apparition throughout the whole story. Fantasy requires consistency. This is referred to as “secondary belief” (Tolkien). Fantasy according to E.M. Foster, requires the reader to adhere to the ways of the fiction including the impossibilities that come with it (Le Guinn). Basically fantasy just requires the reader and the writer to treat any impracticalities or impossibilities as if they were true or could come true.
References
DeleteLe Guin, U.K. (2005). Plausibility revisited: Wha hoppen and what didn't. Retrieved from: http://www.ursulakleguin.com/PlausibilityRevisited.html