| Ursula K.Le Guin is a well-known writer in the contemporary United States.Her works include science fiction and fantasy,realistic novels,poetry,literary criticism,children’s books and translations.She was born to a family with a multicultural and multi-lingual background,resulting in her multicultural way of thinking,which means she can dispense with the limitations of her own native culture and regard all cultures objectively and critically,thinking that every culture has its own values and significance.In her novels,the most frequent theme is the exploration of the possibility of integrating the essence of different cultures on the basis of mutual understanding and respect and creating a newer and broarder culture.Of all Le Guin’s works,the Earthsea Series is a representative one of her multicutural thinking because it has integrated three cultural elements:Taoism from China,the fantasy literary traditions from Europe and the Native Indian cultures from North America.Such three cultures are interwoven and fused together to create a unique and typical world of Le Guin’s.Based on cross-cultural theories,this dissertation immerges such other thoeries as feminism,Bildungsroman thoery and anthropology to analyze the three cultural elements.This dissertation is composed of three parts:the introduction,the main body and the conclusion.The introdution first deals with Le Guin’s literary achievements,the characteristics of her writing,the reason why the Earthsea Series is chosen as the target,as well as a brief introduction to the Earthsea Series.Then there is a review of the previous and current studies of Le Guin and her works home and abroad,the theories of analysis,the framework of this dissertation as well as the academic and realistic meanings of this dissertation.The body part consists of three chapters.Chapter One first makes clear the relations between Le Guin and Taoism,analyses her translation of the Tao Te Ching and the two reasons for her choosing Taoism as a cognitive instrument.The social and historical reason is the collapse of faith and spiritual crisis in American society in the late 1960 after the Vienam War.The famillial reason is the influences her father had had on her with his faith in Taoism.Then this chapter analyses the four aspects of Taoism as a congnitive instrument in the Earthsea Series.The atheist outlook of the universe is employed to resist the transcendent theology of Judo-Christianity;a unity of opposites is utilized to resist the logic of binary of opposites of the Western philosophy.Le Guin also merges Taoist introspect and contemplation with the Western positism and creates unique cognitive methods of her own.Such values as Wei Wuwei(non-action),simplicity and contentment are explored to oppose the endless desires for materials and destructively technological expansion in modern America and the whole world.Taking Taoism as a frame of reference and the fantasy world of Earthsea as a thought experiment,Le Guin tries to urge the reader to reflect the modern ideology and to realize that there are defects and conflicts in the way of thinking and behaving of America.Meanwhile,as a comteporary liberalist intellectual,Le Guin doesn’t accept Taoism totally without critical thinking;instead,she has made some reconstruction about Laozi’s opinions,so that Taoism can meet the demand of modern Western civilization and achieve her goal of "utilization of Taoism".Chapter Two first analyses the main wrtiting modes of the European fantasy literature,including the theme,writing style and characterization.Based on the wholesome development of the Eathsea Series from the first novel published in 1968 to the last one in 2001,this chapter emphasizes how the series has inherited,subverted and transcended the European fantasy tradition in the following five aspects:the skin color of characters,the origin of wizards,the social system,the status of women and dragons.Choosing the dark-skinned characters as the principal group and men of humble origin as the greatest wizard-heroes in Earthsea is Le Guin’s intentional subversion of the two European fantasy traditions:white-domination and elitism,and reflects her racial egalitarianis and democratic ideas.The other three aspects went through such a process:the social system envolved from hierarchy to equality;the status of women and dragons,from margin to the center.These changes reflect two facts.One is that Le Guin’s feminism,liberalism and egalitarianism developed with the Civil Rights Movement and Women’s Movement in 1960s to the beginning of the 21st century.The other fact is that she tries to reconstruct the writing modes of American fantasy literature by subverting those conservative thoughts of European fantasy.Chapter Three first analyses the connections between Le Guin’s family and the Californian Natives.The emphasis of this chapter is to explore how the native cultural elements are represented in the Earthsea Series after Le Guin’s imagination and transformation.This chapter focuses on the following three aspects of native cultural representations in the series:first,the shamanistic features of Earthsea wizards,including their archetypes,their appearences and their career;second,the myths and beliefs in Earthsea,including animism,totemism and the origin of true names;third,the various celebrations and rituals which are characreristic of native cultures,including the Rite of Passage,exchanges of gifts and the oral narrative tradition.By adding native cultural elements into the Earthsea Series,Le Guin tries to break the situation in which fantasy literature is dominated by European cultures and to establish indigenous American fantasy.She also tries to urge her readers to reflect the slaughter,exploitation and discrimination the American Natives had suffered in history done by the White settlers and to protect the rights of the American Natives in reality.On the basis of previous discussion,the last part comes to following conclusions.The three cultural elements are fused and weaved together in the Earthsea text,but Le Guin gives them different emphasis.Taoism is the philosophical foundation on which the whole Earthsea world is built,and it decides the way the European fantasy traditions and the North American native culture are represented.By employing Taoist thoughts as a congnitive instrument to modify the modern ways of thinking and behaving of Americans,Le Guin tries to urge her readers to accept some of the Taoist teachings and thus some of the spiritual and social crises could be relieved.Through subverting and surpassing the European fantasy tradition by inserting feminism,egalitarianism and liberalism in the Earthsea Series,Le Guin not only expands the representative scope of fantasy literature,but also improves the status of American fantasy in the West fantasy literature.Adding American Native cultural elements into the texts has both literay and social meanings:that these elements make Earthsea Series a genuine American fantasy with solid and profound historical background,and that the civil rights of the Native Americans should rouse the public attention and be protected.By fusing the three cultural elements together into the six Earthsea texts,Le Guin makes the series a unique fantastic work both in American literature and the West fantasy world. |
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