Ursula K. Leguin's Earthsea Trilogy | Worlds of Speculative Fiction (lecture 46)

We are restarting the Worlds of Speculative Fiction lecture/discussion series in a new online monthly format. Each session will have a 90-minute video, which will be premiered (allowing chat interaction between viewers and myself). Then immediately following that, we will have a Zoom videoconferencing session, where we'll continue the discussion.

This session focuses on the fantasy and science fiction writer Ursula K. Leguin and her Earthsea Trilogy (next month, we will discuss the following three Earthsea books) We discuss her biography, the narrative universe of her stories, and several philosophical themes of those works.

The main works we concentrate upon in this lecture are:
A Wizard of Earthsea
The Tombs of Atuan
The Farthest Shore
We will also be discussing the two short stories "The Rule of Names" and "The Word of Unbinding"

Authors we have covered in the series so far are J.R..R. Tolkein, A.E. Van Vogt, C.S. Lewis, Isaac Asimov, Frank Herbert, Roger Zelazny, Ursula K. Leguin, Michael Moorcock, Philip K. Dick, Mervyn Peake, George R.R. Martin, Philip Jose Farmer, Madeline L'Engle, Douglas Adams, Anne McCaffrey, Orson Scott Card, Iain Banks, H.P. Lovecraft, William Gibson, C.L. Moore, Octavia Butler, Jorge Luis Borges, Fritz Leiber, Robert Heinlein, L. Sprague de Camp, Andre Norton, Arthur Clarke, Robert Howard, Gene Wolfe, C. J. Cherryh, Jack Vance, Edgar Allan Poe, G.K. Chesterton, Lewis Carroll, Tanith Lee, Gordon Dickson, August Derleth, Karl Edward Wagner, Aldous Huxley, Bram Stoker, Mary Shelley, China Mieville, Walter Miller, Cordwainer Smith, Liu Cixin, R. Scott Bakker, Stanislaw Lem, Neal Stephenson's, Philip Pullman, Olaf Stapledon, Veronica Roth, J.G. Ballard, Dan Simmons, Andrzej Sapkowski, Kim Stanley Robinson, N. K. Jemisin, Terry Pratchett, and Steven Erickson

My videos are used by students, lifelong learners, other professors, and professionals to learn more about topics, texts, and thinkers in philosophy, religious studies, literature, social-political theory, critical thinking, and communications. These include college and university classes, British A-levels preparation, and Indian civil service (IAS) examination preparation

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#Philosophy #Worldbuilding #SpeculativeFiction #Literature #Analysis #Books

[noname_whatsoever]

Thanks, I always enjoy to listen to these over the weekend. I hadn't heard of these books before, but what you said about the importance of naming in the story reminded me of Plato's Cratylus, philosophy of language and, in general, the concept of essence.

[zarthur]

I read these books when I was around 10 years old. I found it a fascinating world, possibly better than even middle earth, as a concept.
I remember being really scared and intrigued as sparrowhawk approached the dragon at the end of the first book.
Yeah haha I didn't care for the other characters just ged, but in a good way!

[kolamoose]

Studio Ghibli also made a lose adaptation of tales of earth sea.