A Wizard of Earthsea (Masterplots II: Women’s Literature Series)
At a glance:
- Author: Ursula K. Le Guin
- First Published: 1968
- Type of Work: Novel
- Type of Plot: Fantasy
- Time of Work: The distant past
- Setting: The world of Earthsea
- Principal Characters: Ged, Ogion, Vetch
- Genres: Long fiction, Fantasy
- Subjects: Self-discovery, Folkloric or magical people, Magic or magicians, Good and evil, Witches or witchcraft, Science fiction, Life and death, Temptation
- Locales: Earthsea (mythic)
Form and Content
Speaking in Sweden in 1989, Ursula K. Le Guin explained why she found it necessary to write Tehanu: The Last Book of Earthsea (1990). She said that she conceived of the Earthsea trilogy, of which A Wizard of Earthsea is the first book, as a subverted heroic tale. In the 1960’s, when she was composing the stories, she thought of herself as transcending gender insofar as she was a woman successfully writing in a masculine genre for children, but she came later to see that, to a significant degree, she was writing as an “honorary or artificial...
[The entire page is 2440 words long]
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