| Summary: | 碩士 === 國立交通大學 === 外國文學與語言學碩士班 === 95 === The thesis attempts to probe into how Ursula K. Le Guin re-discovers the Earthsea world in the latest three novels and how the power shifts in the Earthsea Cycle manifest her evolving feminist awareness. The main texts that the thesis deals with are Le Guin’s Earthsea Cycle, which includes A Wizard of Earthsea (1968), The Tombs of Atuan (1971), The Farthest Shore (1972), Tehanu (1990), Tales from Earthsea (2001), and The Other Wind (2001).
In the first chapter, I argue that the Earthsea world represented in the first trilogy is highly patriarchal for the first three novels are centered on the hero tales to a great extent. With the appearance of the fourth book, Earthsea is gradually changing, however. In the end of the first chapter, the discussion will therefore concentrate on Tehanu, in which Le Guin begins to show her feminist reflection and her distrust of the wizardly world-building.
The fifth book, Tales from Earthsea, provides quite a few pivotal elements that challenge and even subvert the seemingly rigid power structure and gender construction in the first trilogy. As a result, the main task of the second chapter is to decipher how Le Guin deconstructs the artificial hierarchy and the male-dominated culture in the wizardly world.
In the beginning of the third chapter, I read “Dragonfly,” the last story in Tales, as the bridge between the fifth and the sixth volumes. Then, I proceed with an investigation into the sixth book—The Other Wind. In Wind, the wizardly hierarchy finally collapses and Earthsea is going toward a democratic order that promises equality among all. To conclude, the shifts between the first and the second trilogies are in fact the movement from an order of oppression to that of freedom, which faithfully projects Le Guin’s reflection upon and expectations for the real world.
|
|---|
