Ursula K. Le Guin Beyond Genre: Fiction for Children and Adults (Children's Literature and Culture)

220 Pages·2004·2.11 MB·English

by  Mike Cadden

Ursula K. Le Guin
Beyond Genre
CHILDREN'SLITERATUREANDCULTURE
Jack Zipes, Series Editor
Rediscoveries in Children's Literature A Necessary Fantasy?
by Suzanne Rahn The Heroic Figure in Children's Popular
Regendering the School Story Culture
Sassy Sissies and Tattling Tomboys edited by Dudley Jones and Tony Watkins
by Beverly Lyon Clark
Ways of Being Male
White Supremacy in Children's Literature Representing Masculinities in Children's
Characterizations of African Americans, Literature and Film
1830-1900
by John Stephens
by Donnarae MacCann
Pinocchio Goes Postmodern
Retelling Stories, Framing Culture
Perils of a Puppet in the United States
Traditional Story and Metanarratives in
Children's Literature by Richard Wunderlich and Thomas J.
by John Stephens and Robyn McCallum Morrissey
Little Women and the Feminist Imagination The Presence of the Past
Criticism, Controversy, Personal Essays Memory, Heritage, and Childhood in Postwar
edited by Janice M. Alberghene and Beverly
Britain
Lyon Clark
by Valerie Krips
The Case of Peter Rabbit
Changing Conditions of Literature for Children The Feminine Subject in Children's Literature
by Margaret Mackey by Christine Wilkie-Stibbs
Ideologies of Identity in Adolescent Fiction Recycling Red Riding Hood
by Robyn McCallum by Sandra Beckett
Narrating Africa The Poetics of Childhood
George Henty and the Fiction of Empire by Roni Natov
by Mawuena Kossi Logan
Reimagining Shakespeare for Children and
Voices of the Other
Young Adults
Children's Literature and the Postcolonial
edited by Naomi J. Miller
Context
edited by Roderick McGillis Representing the Holocaust in Youth Literature
Translating for Children by Lydia Kokkola
by Riitta Oittinen Beatrix Potter
Children's Films Writing in Code
History, Ideology, Pedagogy, Theory by M. Daphne Kutzer
by Ian Wojcik-Andrews
Utopian and Dystopian Writing for Children
Transcending Boundaries and Young Adults
Writing for a Dual Audience of Children edited by Carrie Hintz and Elaine Ostry
and Adults
edited by Sandra L. Beckett The Making of the Modern Child
Children's Literature and Childhood in the Late
How Picturebooks Work
Eighteenth Century
by Maria Nikolajeva and Carole Scott
by Andrew O'Malley
Russell Hoban/Forty Years
Essays on His Writings for Children Brown Gold
by Alida Allison Milestones of African American Children's
Apartheid and Racism in South African Picture Books, 1845-2002
Children's Literature 1985-1995 by Michelle H. Martin
by Donnarae MacCann and Amadu Maddy Constructing the Classics of Children's
Empire's Children Literature
Empire and Imperialism in Classic British Beyond Library Walls and Ivory Towers
Children's Books by Anne Lundin
by M. Daphne Kutzer
A Past without Shadow
Sparing the Child
Constructing the Past in German Books
Grief and the Unspeakable in Youth Literature
for Children
about Nazism and the Holocaust
by Hamida Bosmajian by Zohar Shavit
Inventing the Child Ursula K. Le Guin Beyond Genre
Culture, Ideology, and the Story of Childhood Fiction for Children and Adults
by Joseph L. Zornado by Mike Cadden
Ursula K. Le Guin
Beyond Genre
Fiction for
Children
and Adults
MIKE CADDEN
Routledge
New York • London
Published in 2005 by
Routledge
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New York,NY 10016
www.routledge-ny.com
Published in Great Britain by
Routledge
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www.routledge.co.uk
Copyright ©2005 by Taylor and Francis Group,a Division of T&F Informa.
Routledge is an imprint of the Tayor & Francis Group.
This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2005.
“To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s
collection of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk.”
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or
utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now
known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording or in
any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing
from the publishers.
Volume 33 in the Children’s Literature and Culture Series.
Library of Congress Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
Cadden,Michael.
Ursula K. Le Guin beyond genre :fiction for children and adults /
Mike Cadden.
p. cm. -- (Children's literature and culture ; v. 33)
Includes bibliographical references (p. ) and index.
ISBN 0-415-97218-3 (alk. paper)
1. Le Guin,Ursula K.,1929- --Criticism and interpretation. 2.
Children's stories,American--History and criticism. 3. Science fiction,
American--History and criticism. 4. Fantasy fiction,American--History
and criticism. I. Title. II. Series:Children's
literature and culture ; 33.
PS3562.E42Z615 2004
813'.54--dc22 2004014416
ISBN 0-203-99711-5 Master e-book ISBN
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Contents
Series Editor’s Foreword vii
Acknowledgments ix
Preface xi
Chapter 1 Le Guin’s Continuum of Anthropomorphism 1
Chapter 2 Connecting Characters on the Continuum of Viewpoint 20
Chapter 3 Home as Travel Through Time and Place 49
Chapter 4 Earthsea:Crossover Series of Multiple Continua 79
Chapter 5 Always Coming Home:Childhood,Children’s
Stories,and the Child Reader 114
Chapter 6 Ethics and the Continuum of Hope:Genre
and Audience 135
Chapter 7 An Interview with Ursula K. Le Guin 147
Endnotes 166
Bibliography 188
Index 197
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Series Editor’s Foreword
Dedicated to furthering original research in children’s literature and culture,
the Children’s Literature and Culture series includes monographs on indi-
vidual authors and illustrators, historical examinations of different periods,
literary analyses of genres, and comparative studies on literature and the
mass media. The series is international in scope and is intended to encourage
innovative research in children’s literature with a focus on interdisciplinary
methodology.
Children’s literature and culture are understood in the broadest sense of
the term “children”to encompass the period of childhood up through adoles-
cence. Owing to the fact that the notion of childhood has changed so much
since the origination of children’s literature,this Routledge series is particu-
larly concerned with transformations in children’s culture and how they have
affected the representation and socialization of children. Although the em-
phasis of the series is on children’s literature, all types of studies that deal
with children’s radio,film,television,and art are included in an endeavor to
grasp the aesthetics and values of children’s culture. Not only have there
been momentous changes in children’s culture in the last 50 years, there
have been radical shifts in the scholarship that considers these changes. In
this regard,the goal of the Children’s Literature and Culture series is to en-
hance research in this field and,at the same time,point to new directions that
bring together the best scholarly work throughout the world.
JACK ZIPES
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Acknowledgments
Like most young adults, I was a crossover reader—alternately reading
Twain,Cormier,pulp fiction,Steinbeck,and young adult sports biographies.
My first encounter with Ursula Le Guin was in 1980. I was a 16-year-old
high school junior trawling my school library for something to read on my
basketball team’s trip to play a tournament in Boston. The trip from Oyster
Bay, Long Island, to Boston would surely provide some down time during
which I could avoid homework and enjoy a new book. It was there, some-
where on I-95,that I became a citizen of Earthsea. I was that young reader
Parnassus Press asked Le Guin to target, and she hit her mark—a moving
target heading across the Throgs Neck Bridge. Nice shot. Three points.
I didn’t know it then, but Le Guin would catch me at various crossover
moments—as a high school student looking for fantasy,as an undergraduate
student rediscovering Le Guin the science fiction writer, as an instructor
looking for something to use in a course on science fiction and fantasy (Is
there a better author for such a mistaken combination course?),and as a doc-
toral student intent on studying children’s literature in the field of English. In
many ways I think my reading of Le Guin over time mirrored her production
by genre,both of us concentrating more on the children’s books later in our
careers. It has been a joy to cross the bridges again and again.
Chapter 6 is a revision of “Speaking to Both Children and Genre: Le
Guin’s Ethics of Audience,” which first appeared in The Lion and the
Unicorn. It is reprinted here with permission of Johns Hopkins University
Press.
I also want to thank Kent State University Press for permission to repub-
lish some material from “Purposeful Movement Among People and Places:
The Sense of Home in Ursula K. Le Guin’s Fiction for Children and Adults,”
which appeared in Extrapolation.
Portions of my article,“Speaking Across the Spaces Between Us:Ursula
Le Guin’s Dialogic Use of Character in Children’s and Adult Literature,”
found in Paradoxa: Studies in World Literary Genres appear in this book.
My thanks go to the people at Paradoxafor their kind permission.
I am grateful to Missouri Western State College for sabbatical leave and
travel funds,which were wonderful gifts vital to the completion of this project.
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