A brief introduction to the writer Ursula K. Le Guin. Caroline Batten offers a basic introduction to author Ursula K. Le Guin's life, work, and lasting impact on the genres of fantasy and science fiction. This ten-minute lecture is based on a talk given at 'Here Be Dragons': The Oxford Fantasy Literature Summer School in 2018.



Caroline Batten is a doctoral researcher in Old English and Old Norse literature at the University of Oxford. Her doctoral thesis is the first stylometric analysis of the Old English metrical charms, and her scholarship more broadly examines gender and sexuality in Old English and Old Norse texts in relation to magic and the supernatural, understandings of disease and the body, and performative speech. She earned her M.Phil from the University of Oxford and her B.A. from Swarthmore College, and currently teaches medieval English literature at Worcester College and St. John’s College, Oxford.

A brief introduction to the writer Ursula K. Le Guin. Caroline Batten offers a basic introduction to author Ursula K. Le Guin's life, work, and lasting impact on the genres of fantasy and science fiction. This ten-minute lecture is based on a talk given at 'Here Be Dragons': The Oxford Fantasy Literature Summer School in 2018. Caroline Batten is a doctoral researcher in Old English and Old Norse literature at the University of Oxford. Her doctoral thesis is the first stylometric analysis of the Old English metrical charms, and her scholarship more broadly examines gender and sexuality in Old English and Old Norse texts in relation to magic and the supernatural, understandings of disease and the body, and performative speech. She earned her M.Phil from the University of Oxford and her B.A. from Swarthmore College, and currently teaches medieval English literature at Worcester College and St. John’s College, Oxford.

Ursula K. Le Guin

Fantasy Literature has emerged as one of the most important genres over the past few decades and now enjoys extraordinary levels of popularity. The impact of Tolkien’s Middle-earth works and the serialisation of George Martin’s ‘Game of Thrones’ books has moved these and their contemporaries into mainstream culture. As the popularity grows so does interest in the roots of fantasy, the main writers and themes, and how to approach these texts.

                Oxford is a natural home to fantasy literature with those who worked or studied here having written so many famous and influential texts (e.g. Lewis Carroll (C. L. Dodgson), C. S. Lewis, J. R. R. Tolkien, Susan Cooper, Diana Wynne Jones, Alan Garner, and Philip Pullman to name but a few) – leading to the notion of an ‘Oxford School of Fantasy’. These lectures, short talks, and interviews seek to take listeners into these works and these writers and beyond. 

All material released under Creative Commons BY-NC-SA 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/ .

[Artwork by Minjie Su.]

Education

Fantasy Literature has emerged as one of the most important genres over the past few decades and now enjoys extraordinary levels of popularity. The impact of Tolkien’s Middle-earth works and the serialisation of George Martin’s ‘Game of Thrones’ books has moved these and their contemporaries into mainstream culture. As the popularity grows so does interest in the roots of fantasy, the main writers and themes, and how to approach these texts. Oxford is a natural home to fantasy literature with those who worked or studied here having written so many famous and influential texts (e.g. Lewis Carroll (C. L. Dodgson), C. S. Lewis, J. R. R. Tolkien, Susan Cooper, Diana Wynne Jones, Alan Garner, and Philip Pullman to name but a few) – leading to the notion of an ‘Oxford School of Fantasy’. These lectures, short talks, and interviews seek to take listeners into these works and these writers and beyond. All material released under Creative Commons BY-NC-SA 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/ . [Artwork by Minjie Su.]

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Ursula K. Le Guin

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