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>> Hi. Every week, after you've finished with the lectures
and the assigned readings and the optional readings,
if you choose to do them,
this little lecture is intended as sort of a wrap up.
Now, while the written lecture deals party specifically
with the Meta issues of that week, this lecture is intended
to deal to very specifically with the readings themselves.
So the question that was posed to you is --
with the James Thurber short story, "The Secret Life
of Walter Mitty," which is considered an iconic American
classic, and Ursula K. Le Guin's "Rule of Names,"
which was considered by many people a sort
of definitive fantasy story --
which one of these is fantasy and which is not?
Or are they both?
And the short answer is
that that while they're both literatures of fantasy,
only the Ursula K. Le Guin story falls within the criteria
that were established for the fantasy genre.
Now, this might appear to be kind of a semantic game.
After all, what's the difference?
And the difference is is that the James Thurber story deals
with the psychological aspects of fantasy,
whereas the Ursula K. Le Guin story is truly
speculative fiction.
Now, while we're gonna be concerned
with both during the course of this class,
for various reasons we're gonna focus on the fantasy genre.
And towards the end we'll come back to other traditions,
like magic realism and surrealism,
which deal with the more psychological or sociological
or philosophical aspects of fantasy.
Now, in the James Thurber story,
what we see is a man fantasizing,
and what's important here is just that he is trying
to escape his mundane life.
His life it isn't really that interesting.
There's a lot going on that's just isn't really all
that enticing.
And so he creates for himself these various fantasies.
He goes off into daydreams where what he's doing in real life,
for instance driving, triggers a fantasy
about flying a plane, let's say.
Now, in this sort of way, we see the kind of desperation
of this sort of mundane person.
And it's to a certain degree in the same kind of desperation
that we see in, say, the poem by T. S. Eliot, "The Love Song
of J. Alfred Prufrock."
The Ursala K. Le Guin story, in contrast to this,
is dealing with a couple of different issues.
It fits into this larger tradition of stories
that she has, which come from what's called "Earthsea."
You may have heard of the book, or even read it,
"The Wizard of Earthsea,"
and there are several follow-ups to it.
And this story is intended to take place in that world.
Now, Earthsea is this very large series of archipelagos, islands,
and the people who live on them and the other creatures
who shared this universe, this world that she's created,
are bound by certain traditions.
There are political traditions.
There are social traditions the same that we have.
But they also have -- and Ursula K. Le Guin does a very good job
of establishing it -- certain magical traditions.
This story is a sort of different
from a typical fantasy story, and now that you've read it,
I can say this without spoiling it.
The dragon wins.
The premise of the story is kind of very, very clever,
the idea of a mistaken identity, and someone being sort of very,
very foolish and jumping to assumptions,
and this leading not only to their death,
but some unfortunate events for those around them.
Later on in the class, we're going to see how the sort
of fantasy genre has certain traditions, and as we look
at these traditions, we'll be able to locate specific stories
with in these traditions and see how one story relates to another
or may comment on another.
So please finish with the assignment for this week,
and I'll see you next week.
Thank you.