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Welcome. I'm Caroline Barton. I'm a doctoral student and I'm an enthusiastic member of Oxford's

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Team Fantasy. This 10 minute paper was originally given out Here

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Be Dragons. The Oxford Fantasy Literature Summer School in 2018.

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And it's intended to be a basic introduction to the life, work and immense influence

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of Ursula Kayla Gwinn, a giant in fantasy and science fiction.

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So let's get started. Ursula Kroeber, the Gwinn, was born in

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1929 in Northern California. The daughter of noted anthropologist

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Alfred Kroeber and the writer Theodora Kraków Kroeber Le Gwinn

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grew up absorbing the ideas of her parents eclectic circle of friends, which included

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anthropologists, writers, journalists and physicists. And several of these accomplished

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individuals were also members of California native communities. So La Gwinn grew up not

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only on the Greek and Norse mythology offered to her by her parents, but on folktales belonging

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to the peoples of the American West. She submitted her first story for publication

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at age 11. She always knew what she wanted to do. When asked in an interview,

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What would you be if you weren't a writer? Liquid replied, Dead.

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By the early 60s, McGuane had written unpublished, rejected draughts of five novels,

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all set in the invented Central European country of cinema. She turned

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instead to science fiction, she said, because there was a market for it, but also

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because she found it beautiful. Her first novel wrote Cannon's World, was

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published in 1966. And from there she wrote brilliant works at an impressive rate.

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For our purposes, there are two cycles within her corpus that have been the most widely

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read, the most influential and the most lauded. The first is the high fantasy

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Earthsea cycle, which includes the trilogy, A Wizard of Earthsea, The Tombs of Oshun

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and The Farthest Shore, followed 20 years later by Tanu and two other books.

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The second is the Hange Cycle, which consists of novels and short stories set

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in a future in which various civilisations on various planets, including Earth,

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contact one another for the first time and set up a confederacy called the X-Men.

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Under the guidance of the planet Haine, which originally ceded all of the other planets

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with genetically modified human populations, the Gwyn's

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writing is always sociologically meticulous. She documents the planets

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of the Eckermann and the peoples of the heartache and car God lands in Earthsea in observant,

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concrete cultural detail. She attributed some of this approach to her father's

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influence. Alfred Kroeber was, for the time, a really cutting edge

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anthropologist. He received the first doctorate in anthropology ever granted by the state

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of California. The Gwinn used that sociological bench to create incredibly

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vivid worlds, and the resulting level of cultural detail is now considered

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standard for quality high fantasy. Indeed, look

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was one of the first fantasy authors to employ what is now a trope of the genre. The idea

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that names have power and the true name of a thing grants you access to its deepest

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nature. She invented the ansible and interstellar communication device

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in the Danish cycle, and the Ansible now appears in numerous later sci fi works.

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She was also arguably the first author to send a protagonist to Wizard School. Gedde

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learns to become a mage at Roke, an all male academy for magic. It's

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worth noting that the basic plot of a wizard of Earthsea is as follows,

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a talented boy from impoverished origins discovers he has the ability to perform magic

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and goes to wizard school. There he encounters an enemy with whom he is intimately

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connected. And in their first encounter, that enemy gives him a scar, which

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subsequently hurts. Whenever the enemy is nearby. When

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asked about Harry Potter, the Gwynn's said, quote, Rolling has many virtues.

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Originality isn't one of them. The more relevant point, perhaps,

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is that LIG wins the Mattick and aesthetic choices have been hugely influential in

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fantasy literature, but she's often left behind. When we talk about the towering figures

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of the genre. So what are those thematic choices?

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The Gwinn has a lot of the usual cultural inheritances of post Tolkien

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fantasy Earthsea is broadly mediæval with a social hierarchy

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ranging from kings to peasants. Dragons loom large. Magic is real.

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The human relationship with nature is essential. The Hanish cycle

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draws, too, on the aesthetics of early sci fi, scientists and anthropologists

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venture into new worlds with new technology and culture clashes ensue.

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But set pieces like Gethin, a planet on which all people are androgenous

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and only gain secondary sex characteristics which can be either male or female

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during certain periods, were revolutionary in the field. Indeed,

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she brought unusual specific recurring concerns to all of her works that we

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could consider, particularly linguine in. The idea she is

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perhaps most concerned with is that a balance, the followed Taoism

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and translated loud Soos touted chain, a central Taoist belief is that the

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universe works harmoniously in its own ways and

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that all forces in it naturally seek to be balanced with one another.

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If one exerts one's own aggressive will, one may disrupt that harmony and

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cause harmful consequences. We should only act when necessary. We should

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act while being mindful of maintaining the world's in balanced harmony. Mages

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in Earthsea must work to uphold the equilibrium of the central balance of forces

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that keeps the world from chaos. Gwyn's mages were Jedi Knights before

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Jedi Knights. Right. GED is taught. Time and again that he must consider the rippling

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consequences of every action. To light a candle is to cast a shadow.

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His master tells him. The creation of Eya, an epic detailing the

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history of Earthsea, declares, quote, only in silence. The word

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only in dark, the light only in dying life bright.

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The Hawks flight on the empty sky. Arguably, Lou, Gwyn's

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environmentalism and her pacifism, two strong themes in her novels relate back

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to this principle of living in peace with the world. Her belief in anarchism and voluntary

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public service is also, I think, related to this idea of maintaining equilibrium

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and rejecting authoritarian dominance as antithetical to balance.

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In the climax of a Wizard of Earthsea, Gedde gives his own name to the deadly shadow

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that has been pursuing him, declaring it to be part of his own nature. The wizard and

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the shadow embrace and get is made whole. Numerous scholars have pointed

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out that this shadow is really similar to the union shadow self, the repressed,

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unconscious part of us. That must be integrated into our self concept to achieve

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healthy adulthood. Gwinn hadn't read Yeom before writing

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Earthsea. And while GED's shadow confrontation certainly follows the Young-Hee and pattern,

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it more obviously suits her interest in holding dark and light in balance.

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Fantasy is the language of the inner self. She wrote and noted the darkness

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within us. Can't be done away with. By swinging a sword.

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These tenets also inform her portrayal of the androgenous Athenians in the left hand

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of Darkness, a Athenian poem reads, quote, lt is the

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left hand of darkness and darkness. The right hand of light, like hands

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joined together, like the end and the way. The Gwinn tries in

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this novel to convey a theme she's discussed elsewhere, that male and female

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qualities are equally valuable and must be held in balance. This

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gender essentialist view, which assumes that all women are one way and all men or another

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binary and distinct, perhaps no longer satisfies. Even in the 60s

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and 70s, winds, feminist credentials were the subject of debate. McQuinn herself

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has admitted that Earthsea is a patriarchal fantasy, heavily male dominated, and

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that her use of male pronouns for the androgynous Athenians was not an ideal choice.

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The second book in the Earthsea cycle, the tunes of Otsu on, focuses on the coming of age of

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a female protagonist, TMR, who serves as the high priestess of what is essentially a

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death cult and eventually frees herself from its hold. The women of the Temple

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of the Nameless Ones have only symbolic power, and they're subject to the Kageyama patriarchal

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ruler who's literally called the God king. They willingly serve the patriarchal

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order. They give themselves up to be spiritually devoured. They become their own jailers.

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TNR, who governs a dark labyrinth in which she sacrifices victims, is both

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the Miniter and Ariadne. She comes to reject the dark

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and extricates herself, destroying the labyrinth in the process. Yet no alternative

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for a self-possessed, newly freed woman is immediately forthcoming. She

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has nowhere to go. The Gwinn doesn't seem to have anywhere to put her.

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It's only into Hanu. That lagoon offers a partial vision of meaningful female

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life in Earthsea. There's so much more to say about

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Gwen and her hugely rich body of work, and it has engendered all kinds of debate amongst readers and

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scholars. But for now, I will leave you with her words from a commencement

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address delivered to Mills College in 1983. I hope you

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live without the need to dominate. And without the need to be dominated. I hope

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you are never victims, but I hope you have no power over other people.

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And when you fail and are defeated and in pain and in the dark,

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then I hope you will remember that darkness is your country, where you live,

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where no wars are fought and no wars are won. But where the future is,

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our roots are in the dark. The earth is our country. Why did we look

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up for blessing instead of around and down? What hope we have.

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Lies there. Not in the sky, full of orbiting spy eyes and weaponry,

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but in the earth. We have looked down upon not from above, but from below.

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Not in the light that blinds, but in the dark. That nourishes where human beings

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grow human souls. Thank you for your time.