The portrayal of nature in works of fantasy is coloured by the corresponding context. This book shows how the natural world has been depicted within this genre, comparing the British tradition with Ursula K. Le Guins Earthsea cycle. Because of her specific context, Le Guins works deviate from the received tradition in significant ways.
The portrayal of nature in the genre of fantasy fiction, from the Middle Ages to more modern times, has been conditioned by the diverging social, political and historical contexts. This book seeks to disclose how the natural world has been depicted within this genre during different periods, drawing a comparison between the British tradition of fantasy literature and Ursula K. Le Guins Earthsea cycle. Le Guin adheres to the general traits of the genre up to a point, but as a woman of the 20th century living in the American West, her works also deviate from the received tradition in many significant ways.
| Introduction |
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11 | (6) |
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I The Discourse of Nature in British Imaginative Literature: From the Middle Ages to the Early Twentieth Century |
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17 | (22) |
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The expression of nature in the Anglo-Saxon period |
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17 | (6) |
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Knights of the court and medieval romance narratives |
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23 | (6) |
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Sublime nature in Gothic narratives |
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29 | (4) |
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Nature in 19th-century prose romances |
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33 | (6) |
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II Edwardian Reconfigurations of the Poetics of Nature and Fantasy |
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39 | (18) |
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English landscapes and fantasy in Edwardian literature |
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41 | (2) |
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Children's literature, nature and fantasy |
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43 | (3) |
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Nature, transcendence and fantasy |
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46 | (8) |
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Post-Edwardian rural fantasy narratives |
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54 | (3) |
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III J.R.R. Tolkien's Depiction of Nature |
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57 | (22) |
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Tolkien's "Recovery" and transcendentalism |
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65 | (11) |
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The portrayal of the West in Tolkien's works |
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76 | (3) |
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IV Nature, Fantasy and the American West in Ursula K. Le Guin's Earthsea |
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79 | (60) |
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Le Guin's imaginative transformation of the West |
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81 | (3) |
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The world of Earthsea: Precedents |
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84 | (10) |
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94 | (1) |
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95 | (14) |
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Nature and the Language of the Making |
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109 | (9) |
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Cob: Power That Dominates |
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118 | (11) |
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129 | (10) |
| Conclusions |
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139 | (6) |
| Bibliography |
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145 | |
Martin Simonson wrote his Ph.D thesis on the interaction of narrative genres in The Lord of the Rings, and he has published extensively on Tolkien and fantasy literature. He has edited a number of academic books and anthologies on fantasy and fairy tales, and on Western American literature. He has translated about thirty novels, plays and essays into Spanish, among others a number of titles by J.R.R. Tolkien. He currently teaches modern English literature on the BA program of English Studies at the University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU) in Vitoria (Spain), as well as fantasy, science fiction and Gothic novel on the M.A. program of comparative literature at the same university.
Jon Alkorta Martiartu received his Ph.D from the University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU) in the year 2019, with a comparative study of the problems raised by the idea of progress in canonical British fantasy and the Earthsea universe of Ursula K. Le Guin. He has also helped organize and participated as a speaker in several international conferences in Spain and Portugal.
