DOCSLIB.ORG

Transcript of Remembering Ursula K. Le Guin

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text

Load more

1 You’re listening to Imaginary Worlds, a show about how we create them and why we suspend our disbelief. I’m Eric Molinsky. I was halfway through my Doctor Who mini-series when something very significant happened in the world of science fiction. The great novelist Ursula K. Le Guin passed away. And I was contemplating how to address her legacy on my podcast when a listener told me about a documentary that being made called Worlds of Ursula K. Le Guin. The director Arwen Curry spent almost ten years with Le Guin, and now she’s in the final stage of putting the film together. Her production office is in Berkeley – and since I was in the Bay Area recently, I wanted to stop by and hear about the film. It’s funny interviewing someone who is so adapt at doing interviews. She was adjusting her own mic, and she even knew the question I was going to ask to get her sound levels – which the question every public radio reporter asks to get your levels: tell me what you had for breakfast. ARWEN: I was going to say Oatmeal. You know my question! ARWEN: I’ve done a little bit of radio. Arwen Curry was raised in Berkeley. She says her father was a big influence on her childhood imagination. Her was an early Dungeons & Dragons player, and he enlisted his kids on adventures that went way beyond the D&D manuals. And his bookshelves were filmed with fantasy novels – books like The Lathe of Heaven by Ursula K. Le Guin. ARWEN: I loved the Lathe of Heaven which is one of the books on my father's bookshelf and that's a book in which the protagonist. His dreams change reality. So he wakes up from one of these powerful dreams and the whole world has changed but no one knows it except for him. And I just loved that idea. Ursula Le Guin was also raised in Berkeley. And even as a kid, Arwen felt there was something very familiar about Le Guin’s voice. ARWEN: There are things that I have in common with Ursula that have become clear to me over the course of working on the documentary and that may be what it is in this case is that sort of a you know a deeply humane deeply sane kind of 1 2 rational scientific but very you know very measured and poetic approach that seemed familiar to me perhaps because my own father was a scientist and she was being inflected by that in her work. Ursula's father was an anthropologist and mine was a chemist and that kind of conversation about understanding things scientifically about proving a problem approaching a problem in a really open minded and creative way with an eye always toward looking to the truth with something that I was familiar with that voice seemed very in tune with the kinds of voices that I had in my own family. And it wasn’t just a scientific way of looking at the world. Ursula Le Guin’s father was an anthropologist. Both her parents were academics and experts on Native American cultures of California. ARWEN: And so her childhood was textured with an understanding of many cultures many voices many kinds of ways of approaching the world and she knew in a way that most people don't. From early on that hers was only one way that the primary way that she lived as a as a young kid in Berkeley in America was only one way of seeing the world and that there were many others out there all equally valid which was the approach of her father's anthropology. Which was very unusual perspective for an American kid to have in the 1930s and ‘40s. Also: ARWEN: She was not treated differently in any significant way from her four brothers. She was encouraged to participate in their lively conversations and arguments and to do all the rough and tumble play and to really put herself right in the middle of it. Yeah I remember I read some interviews that you were she was saying that people thing that she's sort of very assertive and suffers no fools and throws her opinions out there but she's like this is this for me that is just starting a conversation is what I had to do with the youngest of all these children just to get myself heard. ARWEN: Exactly. And now that we're talking about it I can say that this was another real similarity with how I grew up and something in her voice which was very familiar to me was just this kind of embrace of the argument as a way of communicating a way of getting to the truth. And then we live in a society that fears that strong opinion being put out there at the dinner table that feels like an argument. It feels like conflict and people back away from it. And in my family and I think also in Ursula's family this lively intellectual discussion was just the way that people spoke. 2 3 So when did you have the idea to make the documentary about her? ARWEN: First let's see I first began to think about the documentary probably 2003. The idea first came into my head and in fact remained in my head as I went to get my master's degree at the University of California Berkeley journalism school. Initially I valued her as a kind of feminist godmother and as a reader to find that person in fiction was where kind of my heart went but I didn't know very much about her story. I didn't know how it would be connected to so many other things that I found fascinating and that I cared deeply about. So the more I began to investigate it the more it became clear to me that I really did want to get into that story and that it was a video that it was film. Why did you feel like this is definitely got to be a film? ARWEN: There are many good reasons to make to tell stories in film but I think in this case I wanted to share the experience of knowing her and speaking with her in a way that was more direct and immediate and intimate than happens in fiction – of course fiction can be intimate but it’s not the same as being able to look at someone's gestures and to see their expressions and to of course hear their voice and then to tell the rest of the story as well. So going back to the beginning of the documentary you had to approach her of course. How did that go at first? ARWEN: First I had to go get the training that I got the training Oh the training really? ARWEN: Yeah. You had made some didn't you --? ARWEN: No, when I will when I first had the idea I was working in print. Then I decided to work on this and it was part of the reason that I went to journalism school where I did the documentary program to learn how to make documentary films of this of this scale. Wow. So with that in mind the idea that you would eventually make a film. Oh wow. ARWEN: So it in fact kind of drove my -- the direction of my storytelling and my career. Right so step one -- go to film school. Step two was to establish herself as a filmmaker. Finally step three: contact Ursula Le Guin. By the way, she had done interviews in print and on the radio, but she didn’t like being on camera – so there had never been a documentary about her before. ARWEN: Well I had a little bit of help. We had a mutual friend who was a member of a collective of house cleaners who up until the end and I think still cleans Ursula’s house and kind of helps take care of things there. And I knew this 3 4 mutual friend Mo who basically could put in a good word for me so I sent Ursula my only film which was a short documentary about compulsive hoarding and sent it to her and said this is my work. This is some of the writing that I've done. Basically this is who I am in the most simple terms that I can express it. And this is what I'd like to do. And then this mutual friend Moe Boaster put in a good word for me which I think also swayed Ursula to kind of entertain the idea and then at a certain point early on before we had met she sort of backtracked a little bit and was looking like she was maybe having second thoughts. And that's when we met. I said basically let me let me come over and talk to you. What was that conversation like and also where you and him needed to finally meet her? ARWEN: I was a little intimidated to meet her -- but I was more driven to convince her to let me do this, and so that was primarily the energy that that I was bringing there. I wanted to really share with her why I thought it was important and see if I could get her to see that and what she had to overcome on her end is really significant is just her natural kind of shyness and discomfort with being in front of the camera.
Recommended publications
  • Television Sharknados and Twitter Storms

    Television Sharknados and Twitter Storms

    Television Sharknados and Twitter Storms: Cult Film Fan Practices in the Age of Social Media Branding Stephen William Hay A thesis submitted to Victoria University of Wellington in fulfilment of the regulations for the degree of Master of Arts in Media Studies Victoria University of Wellington 2016 Abstract This thesis examines the Syfy channel’s broadcast of the television movie Sharknado and the large number of tweets that were sent about it. Sharknado’s audience engaged in cult film viewing practices that can be understood using paracinema theory. Paracinema engagement with cult films has traditionally taken place in midnight screenings in independent movie theatres and private homes. Syfy’s audience was able to engage in paracinematic activity that included making jokes about Sharknado’s low quality of production and interacting with others who were doing the same through the affordances of Twitter. In an age where branding has become increasingly important, Syfy clearly benefited from all the fan activity around its programming. Critical branding theory argues that the value generated by a business’s brand comes from the labour of consumers. Brand management is mostly about encouraging and managing consumer labour. The online shift of fan practices has created new opportunities for brand managers to subsume the activities of consumers. Cult film audience practices often have an emphasis on creatively and collectively engaging in rituals and activities around a text. These are the precise qualities that brands require from their consumers. Sharknado was produced and marketed by Syfy to invoke the cult film subculture as part of Syfy’s branding strategy.
  • Apocalypse As Religious and Secular Discourse in Battlestar Galactica

    Apocalypse As Religious and Secular Discourse in Battlestar Galactica

    Volume 6 2014-15 APOCALYPSE & GHOSTS Apocalypse as Religious and Secular Discourse in Battlestar Galactica and its Prequel Caprica Diane Langlumé University of Paris VIII Saint-Denis Abstract he concept of the end of the world is inherent in religious discourse. Illustratively, in T Medieval Christianity, a divine power was held responsible for cataclysmic events. In the post-Hiroshima era, the concept of apocalypse has taken on secular meaning. Not surprisingly, given recent history, the apocalypse has become a prominent component of popular television epics; broadcast narratives, such as Battlestar Galactica and Caprica, entwine both Biblical and secular versions of the apocalypse, thereby creating a novel apocalyptic discourse which, instead of establishing the apocalypse as an end, uses it as a foundation, as a thought-provoking means of conveying a political message of tolerance and acceptance of otherness, of encouraging self-reflectiveness; and as a way of denouncing the empty rhetoric of religious extremism. Keywords: Television series, Battlestar Galactica, Caprica, religion, Book of Mormon, Bible, Book of Revelation, John of Patmos, Genesis, Adam, Garden of Eden, Heaven, God, fall of man, the beast, false prophet, angel, Second Coming, resuscitation, apocalypse, end of the world, nuclear apocalypse, Hiroshima, post-apocalyptic, genocide, intertextuality, parody, pastiche, religious satire, 9/11, America, religious terrorism, suicide bombing, cyborg, robot, humanity, monotheism, polytheism. he television series Battlestar Galactica1 establishes its chronology between a nuclear T apocalypse that has just taken place and the threat of a potential future apocalypse,2 both at the hands of human-looking cyborgs called Cylons. Caprica, its prequel series, set fifty- eight years before the nuclear detonation, unfolds the events leading up to the apocalypse in Battlestar Galactica.
  • Cosmos: a Spacetime Odyssey (2014) Episode Scripts Based On

    Cosmos: a Spacetime Odyssey (2014) Episode Scripts Based On

    Cosmos: A SpaceTime Odyssey (2014) Episode Scripts Based on Cosmos: A Personal Voyage by Carl Sagan, Ann Druyan & Steven Soter Directed by Brannon Braga, Bill Pope & Ann Druyan Presented by Neil deGrasse Tyson Composer(s) Alan Silvestri Country of origin United States Original language(s) English No. of episodes 13 (List of episodes) 1 - Standing Up in the Milky Way 2 - Some of the Things That Molecules Do 3 - When Knowledge Conquered Fear 4 - A Sky Full of Ghosts 5 - Hiding In The Light 6 - Deeper, Deeper, Deeper Still 7 - The Clean Room 8 - Sisters of the Sun 9 - The Lost Worlds of Planet Earth 10 - The Electric Boy 11 - The Immortals 12 - The World Set Free 13 - Unafraid Of The Dark 1 - Standing Up in the Milky Way The cosmos is all there is, or ever was, or ever will be. Come with me. A generation ago, the astronomer Carl Sagan stood here and launched hundreds of millions of us on a great adventure: the exploration of the universe revealed by science. It's time to get going again. We're about to begin a journey that will take us from the infinitesimal to the infinite, from the dawn of time to the distant future. We'll explore galaxies and suns and worlds, surf the gravity waves of space-time, encounter beings that live in fire and ice, explore the planets of stars that never die, discover atoms as massive as suns and universes smaller than atoms. Cosmos is also a story about us. It's the saga of how wandering bands of hunters and gatherers found their way to the stars, one adventure with many heroes.
  • Netflix and the Development of the Internet Television Network

    Netflix and the Development of the Internet Television Network

    Syracuse University SURFACE Dissertations - ALL SURFACE May 2016 Netflix and the Development of the Internet Television Network Laura Osur Syracuse University Follow this and additional works at: https://surface.syr.edu/etd Part of the Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons Recommended Citation Osur, Laura, "Netflix and the Development of the Internet Television Network" (2016). Dissertations - ALL. 448. https://surface.syr.edu/etd/448 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the SURFACE at SURFACE. It has been accepted for inclusion in Dissertations - ALL by an authorized administrator of SURFACE. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Abstract When Netflix launched in April 1998, Internet video was in its infancy. Eighteen years later, Netflix has developed into the first truly global Internet TV network. Many books have been written about the five broadcast networks – NBC, CBS, ABC, Fox, and the CW – and many about the major cable networks – HBO, CNN, MTV, Nickelodeon, just to name a few – and this is the fitting time to undertake a detailed analysis of how Netflix, as the preeminent Internet TV networks, has come to be. This book, then, combines historical, industrial, and textual analysis to investigate, contextualize, and historicize Netflix's development as an Internet TV network. The book is split into four chapters. The first explores the ways in which Netflix's development during its early years a DVD-by-mail company – 1998-2007, a period I am calling "Netflix as Rental Company" – lay the foundations for the company's future iterations and successes. During this period, Netflix adapted DVD distribution to the Internet, revolutionizing the way viewers receive, watch, and choose content, and built a brand reputation on consumer-centric innovation.
  • TEEN FEMINIST KILLJOYS? Mapping Girls' Affective Encounters With

    TEEN FEMINIST KILLJOYS? Mapping Girls' Affective Encounters With

    Á 6 TEEN FEMINIST KILLJOYS? Mapping Girls’ Aff ective Encounters with Femininity, Sexuality, and Feminism at School Jessica Ringrose and Emma Renold International research has documented the phenomenon of contem- porary young women repudiating or disinvesting from identifi cations with feminism (Jowett 2004: 99; Baker 2008; Scharff 2012). Indeed, femi- nism is frequently constituted as both abject and obsolete by a postfem- inist media context that suggests women are now equal in education, the workplace, and the home (McRobbie 2008; Ringrose and Renold 2010). Most of the scholarship on the relationship between new fem- ininities (Gill and Scharff 2011) and diff erent forms of feminism or postfeminism (Budgeon 2011), does not, however, explicitly deal with adolescence and teen girls’ relationships to feminism, although there is some writing on how the girl and associations with girlishness have historically been set in contradiction to a feminist identity, and the need to overcome this and take girls’ political subjectivities seriously (Baumgardner and Richards 2004; Eisenhauer 2004). One particularly promising area is a growing literature exploring girls’ political, activist, or counter-cultural subjectivities, via girls’ on- line identity formation (Weber and Mitchell 2008; Currie et al. 2009) through new media practices such as blogging, zines, and digital social networking (Piepmeier, 2009; Zaslow 2009; Ringrose 2011; Keller 2012; see also Keller’s contribution to this volume, among others). However, there is still a limited amount of research that focuses on teenage girls explicitly taking up feminist activist identities and practices. Indeed, much research, including our own, has focused on what Currie et al. call “de facto feminism” (2008: 39) that is, discursive traces of feminist ideology or resistance in the talk and experiences of teen girls, even if they do not explicitly identify with or defi ne themselves as feminist (Renold and Ringrose 2008, 2011).
  • Plural Subjectivity in Stargate SG-1

    Plural Subjectivity in Stargate SG-1

    Language, Literature, and Interdisciplinary Studies (LLIDS) ISSN: 2547-0044 ellids.com/archives/2020/07/3.4-Ferebee.pdf CC Attribution-No Derivatives 4.0 International License www.ellids.com “Pain in Someone Else’s Body”: Plural Subjectivity in Stargate SG-1 K.M. Ferebee Abstract Lennard Davis, in his work on visualizing the disabled body, argues that at root the body is inherently and always already fragmented. The unified “whole body” is, therefore, hallucinatory in nature—an imaginary figure through which the body’s multiplicity is repressed. There is much in this view that is consonant with posthumanism, which so often seeks to destabilize the “whole” and singular one in favor of the multiple, the fragmentary, and the hybrid. Yet despite these considerations of the body as fragmentary, little attention has been paid to the value of considering the body not only as fragmentary, but also as potential fragment. What might we learn by rejecting anthropocentric assumptions about the body-mind’s inherent completeness, and exploring the radically plural ontologies offered by visions of shared, joint, or group body-minds? This paper turns to science fiction as a source of such visions, considering depictions of symbiotic and hive minds through the non-traditional models of ontology and agency. While science fiction has traditionally represented plural being as a troubling and fearful injury to wholeness, this paper aims to highlight the symbiotic Tok’ra1 of television series Stargate SG-1 as a model of excess being that not only challenges the naturalization of the “complete” body, but also asks us to interrogate presumed boundaries between self and other.
  • ANDROMEDA! a CHOOSE YOUR OWN PATH SCREENPLAY By

    ANDROMEDA! a CHOOSE YOUR OWN PATH SCREENPLAY By

    WELCOME TO ANDROMEDA! A CHOOSE YOUR OWN PATH SCREENPLAY by Merrick Ann McCurdy HONORS THESIS Submitted to Texas State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for graduation in the Honors College May 2021 Thesis Supervisor: Jordan Morille Second Reader: Anne Winchell COPYRIGHT by Merrick McCurdy 2021 FAIR USE AND AUTHOR’S PERMISSION STATEMENT Fair Use This work is protected by the Copyright Laws of the United States (Public Law 94-553, section 107). Consistent with fair use as defined in the Copyright Laws, brief quotations from this material are allowed with proper acknowledgement. Use of this material for financial gain without the author’s express written permission is not allowed. Duplication Permission As the copyright holder of this work I, Merrick McCurdy, authorize duplication of this work, in whole or in part, for educational or scholarly purposes only. DEDICATION To Jordan. Simply put, this just wouldn’t exist without you. TABLE OF CONTENTS Page ABSTRACT ................................................................................................................... vi CHAPTER I. “THE ORIGIN STORY” ..............................................................................1 – 6 II. CHOICE MAP ...............................................................................................7 III. WELCOME TO ANDROMEDA! ..........................................................8 – 202 IV. WORLDBUILDING ..........................................................................203 – 207 V. CHARACTER LIST ............................................................................208
  • Science Fiction Book Club Interview with Author Julie Phillips February

    Science Fiction Book Club Interview with Author Julie Phillips February

    Science Fiction Book Club Interview with author Julie Phillips February 2018 Julie Phillips is an American biographer and book critic living in Amsterdam. She is currently working on a book on writing and mothering, “The Baby on the Fire Escape”, as welI as a biography of Ursula K. Le Guin. She is the author of “James Tiptree, Jr.: The Double Life of Alice B. Sheldon,” which received several honors including the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Hugo and Locus Awards, and the Washington State Book Award. Le Guin Questions Javier Ojst: Much respect for Le Guin but I would like to ask why did she seem to not want to be considered a SF writer? A writer that got most of her fame writing in this wonderful genre. "Le Guin won all the major honors of the science-fiction field — including Hugos, Nebulas and Locus awards. But she bristled a bit at being pigeonholed. “I know that I am always called ‘the sci-fi writer.’ Everybody wants to stick me into that one box, while i really live in several boxes,” she said in a widely quoted 2000 interview. -geekwiredotcom...thanks! Actually Le Guin was very loyal to SF and fantasy. When she accepted the medal from the National Book Foundation, she used her speech to criticize publishers for ignoring genre writers. When Margaret Atwood said she wrote “speculative fiction” rather than SF, Le Guin accused her of turning her back on genre. (See https://www.theguardian.com/books/2009/aug/29/margaret-atwood-year-of-flood) Le Guin didn’t want to abandon the “genre ghetto” for respectability; she insisted on recognition for SF as a whole.
  • The Crip, the Fat and the Ugly in an Age of Austerity: Resistance, Reclamation, and Affirmation

    The Crip, the Fat and the Ugly in an Age of Austerity: Resistance, Reclamation, and Affirmation

    Volume 14 REVIEW OF DISABILITY STUDIES: AN INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL Issue 2 Forum - The Crip, the Fat and the Ugly in an Age of Austerity: Resistance, Reclamation, and Affirmation NoBody’s Perfect: Charm, Willfulness and Resistance Maria Tsakiri, PhD Independent Researcher Abstract: The purpose of this paper is to discuss the representations of disabled bodies on the basis of Niko von Glasow’s documentary film NoBody’s Perfect. Drawing on disability aesthetics (Siebers, 2006) and the notion of crip killjoys (Johnson & McRuer, 2014), it is argued that representations of crip killjoys and their unruly corporeality offer an aesthetic and political context in which the politics of disgust and resentment can be challenged (Hughes, 2015; Soldatic & Meekosha, 2012). Keywords: disability aesthetics, crip killjoys, willfulness. Introduction In this paper, I explore the representations of disabled bodies in Niko von Glasow’s documentary film, NoBody’s Perfect (2008). Von Glasow, who was born disabled due to the side-effects of thalidomide, created NoBody’s Perfect while looking for eleven people affected by thalidomide to pose for a photography project that aimed to bring visibility to the thalidomide case. Through a darkly humorous touch, this documentary film presents the issues that the twelve social actors had to face during the different stages of their life and their reactions towards von Glasow’s photoshoot project. The narrative of the film concludes with von Glasow’s unsuccessful attempts to make contact with the pharmaceutical company Grünenthal, that produced the thalidomide drug. I find the material of the representations that NoBody’s Perfect offers very interesting to discuss as it makes visible the resistance of crip killjoys (Johnson & McRuer, 2014).
  • PAD-79-33 a Framework for Balancing Privacy And

    PAD-79-33 a Framework for Balancing Privacy And

    1 -- _ , , _ EXPOSURE DRAFT , / Xl /-, , / / . r I = A FRAMEWORKFORBAtiNClNG PRIVACY ANDACCOUNTABMTY NEEDS IN EVALUATlONS OFSOCIAL RESEARCH , c \ ./ ;f;W$t3STA TES GhVERA L ACCOUNTIIL’G OFFICE March 1979 . t COMPTROLLER GENERAL OF THE UNITED STATES WASHINGTON 0 C PO548 3-161740 Both the Congress and the Executive are comrlltted to revlewlng and reconsidering Federal policleb, programs, and activities. We remain optlmlstlc about the ablllty of the Federal Government to obtain the lnformatlon necessary to perform these functions and to make appropriate changes in Government activities. Social research 1s one mechanism for providing lnforrnatlon which public policymakers need to make meanlng- ful declslons. However, pubilc accountability for Government sponsored EbedrCh requires that the processes which create and Jisseminate this 1nfOrnldtiOn be open to scrutiny. In using inforraatlon from a research study, declslonmakers ought to be confident that the results are credible. Independent reviews, lncludlng reanalysis of research data, can help to assure this credibility. The Privacy Pr tectlon Study Connission .I tne National Commission for the Protecti on of Bur?an Sub-I ects of Biomedical and Behavioral j!tzGz T-al Sci -C 'zica S-ESTZstical kssociat~on' s Ad Hoc Committee on Privacy and lIzz%ifidentialit~, and a n.umber of lndlvlciual researchers have recognize; that the public interest 1s served by such independent evaluations. Tnese evaluations can be performed by agency evaluation units, audit ayencles, or other research organizations. Careful cooperation by researchers and reviewers, however, will be reyulred to assure that the rights and obllyatlons of all involved parties are appropriately balanced. These , include, on the one hand, protecting the privacy rights of research participants.
  • PDF Download the Running Man Ebook

    PDF Download the Running Man Ebook

    THE RUNNING MAN PDF, EPUB, EBOOK Richard Bachman,Stephen King | 256 pages | 06 Feb 2013 | Hodder & Stoughton General Division | 9781444723540 | English | London, United Kingdom The Running Man () - IMDb Navigator on the plane that Ben Richards hijacked - Games Council controller. Driver of the car that took Ben Richards from Boston. Friend of Bradley Throckmorton. Guard who loaned Richards 50 cents to call home while he was trying to enter the games. Built pollution counter. Brother of Rich, and friend of Bradley Throckmorton. Brother of Dink, and friend of Bradley Throckmorton. Crazy Credits. Alternate Versions. Rate This. An Englishman with a grudge against an insurance company for a disallowed claim fakes his own death, but is soon pursued by an insurance investigator. Director: Carol Reed. Writers: John Mortimer screenplay , Shelley Smith novel. Added to Watchlist. Favourite Films of Abby's Cinema. Use the HTML below. You must be a registered user to use the IMDb rating plugin. Edit Cast Cast overview, first billed only: Laurence Harvey Rex Lee Remick Stella Alan Bates Stephen Felix Aylmer Parson Eleanor Summerfield Hilda Tanner Allan Cuthbertson Jenkins Harold Goldblatt Tom Webster Noel Purcell Miles Bleeker Ramsay Ames Madge Penderby Fernando Rey Sam Crewdson Colin Gordon Solicitor John Meillon Jim Jerome Roger Delgado Edit Storyline Hard up and with a grudge against insurance companies, English pilot Rex Black fakes his death and meets up with his wife and the money in Malaga, Spain when things have quieted down. By , after a worldwide economic collapse, the United States has become a totalitarian police state , censoring all cultural activity.
  • The Development of Dragons in Ursula K. Le Guin's the Earthsea

    The Development of Dragons in Ursula K. Le Guin's the Earthsea

    國立台灣師範大學英語學系 碩 士 論 文 Master Thesis Graduate Institute of English National Taiwan Normal University 從平衡到改變： 論娥蘇拉‧勒瑰恩《地海六部曲》之龍的演變 From Equilibrium to Change: The Development of Dragons in Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Earthsea Cycle 指導教授：梁 孫 傑 Advisor: Dr. Sun-chieh Liang 研 究 生：歐 妍 儀 Advisee：Yen-I Ou 中 華 民 國 九 十 九 年 六 月 June, 2010 From Equilibrium to Change: The Development of Dragons in Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Earthsea Cycle A thesis submitted to The Graduate Institute of English National Taiwan Normal University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts by Yen-I Ou June 2010 ix 摘要 娥蘇拉‧勒瑰恩《地海六部曲》的創作橫跨三十多年，而每一部新的地海 作品總是不斷改寫前一部作品中既有的架構，其中對龍的描寫更是不斷顛覆西方 古典敘事中龍的原型，使龍有愈趨人性化的傾向。在不斷對龍去妖魔化與動物化 的過程中，勒瑰恩也跳脫了傳統西方英雄敘事中以人征服自然為主軸的架構，並 加入了女性主體的覺醒，從而與德希達的動物論述與東方老子哲學的柔弱思想， 能夠相互呼應。地海之龍的形象與塑造，因而可作為進一步探究人、動物、自然 三者交互關係的論述對象。另外，勒瑰恩藉著地海之龍的演變，也透露出她對「改 變」一詞所持的看法，與之在地海作品中不斷提到的「平衡」觀，產生持續的相 互辯證關係。故本論文希冀從觀察地海之龍的改變與發展，除了討論地海世界不 斷產生的自我解構外，也在東西方對人性與動物性的探究上，提供一種融合的詮 釋之道。 關鍵詞：《地海六部曲》，龍，動物，凱密拉 (Chimera)，巫術，德希達，道家思 想，平衡，改變。 xi Abstract Ursula K. Le Guin has spanned over three decades to create her classic fantasy The Earthsea Cycle, and in each new Earthsea book, she keeps rewriting the structure she designates for the previous one. Among all the changes, her depiction for the Earthsea dragons especially subverts the draconian archetype in the Western conventional narratives, enabling her dragons to be humanized step by step. In the process of de-demonizing and de-animalizing the Earthsea dragons, Le Guin also escapes the confines set by the traditional Western heroism, which often acclaims the human conquering over Nature.