A lecture delivered under the title Children, women, men and dragons at Worlds Apart, an institute sponsored by Children's Literature New England and held from August 2 to 8, 1992 at Keble College, Oxford University, England Reproduction of a lecture given by Le Guin at the CLNE in 1992 at Keble College, Oxford. A closely reasoned and fearlessly self-revealing account of a struggle to reconcile the ancient archetypes of the hero-tale with a true estimate of the value of, and values of, women and men in a world whose stories now need to celebrate the private as well as the public virtues, and many different kinds of courage.
Author
Ursula K. Le Guin published twenty-two novels, eleven volumes of short stories, four collections of essays, twelve books for children, six volumes of poetry and four of translation, and has received many awards: Hugo, Nebula, National Book Award, PEN-Malamud, etc. Her recent publications include the novel Lavinia, an essay collection, Cheek by Jowl, and The Wild Girls. She lived in Portland, Oregon. She was known for her treatment of gender (The Left Hand of Darkness, The Matter of Seggri), political systems (The Telling, The Dispossessed) and difference/otherness in any other form. Her interest in non-Western philosophies was reflected in works such as "Solitude" and The Telling but even more interesting are her imagined societies, often mixing traits extracted from her profound knowledge of anthropology acquired from growing up with her father, the famous anthropologist, Alfred Kroeber. The Hainish Cycle reflects the anthropologist's experience of immersing themselves in new strange cultures since most of their main characters and narrators (Le Guin favoured the first-person narration) are envoys from a humanitarian organization, the Ekumen, sent to investigate or ally themselves with the people of a different world and learn their ways.
