Eleven Videos on Ursula K. Leguin’s the Tombs of Atuan
free video lectures exploring themes, plot, characters and the narrative world of Leguin’s second Earthsea novel
This semester I am leading students through all of Ursula K Leguin’s marvelous novels and stories set in her “secondary world” of Earthsea. It is a new type of course for me to teach, one primarily focused on literature, and fantasy literature at that, and both I and the students at Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design are very much enjoying it!
The class is called “Philosophy and Fantasy: Leguin’s Earthsea”, and we are using the recently published omnibus volume that gathers all the books and stories of Earthsea along with Charles Vess’ illustrations and Leguin’s own reflections and reminiscences. It is quite a tome, weighing in at over 5 lbs, but well worth having and perusing.
It is an online course with weekly meetings to discuss the stories, but as is my practice in nearly all of my courses, I also produce lecture videos focused on specific topics — in this case the events, characters, relationships, plot points, themes, even the imaginary geography of Earthsea.
The Tombs of Atuan is a very rich, though short, novel, in which the story of the young Karhish priestess, Arha the “eaten one,” eternally reincarnated servant of the Nameless Ones, progresses through a lonely childhood, and then as a young woman encounters the main character from the first Earthsea novel, Sparrowhawk or Ged, there to rob the tombs of a prized possession, half of the broken Ring of Peace.
I created an entire set of eleven lecture videos for my students, and I offer them here to you now, for anyone who is interested in reading The Tombs of Atuan, and might benefit from a little guidance or insight from another reader along the way. If you haven’t read the book, and just want to watch the videos, you can do that as well — but I hope the videos will entice you into reading the novel. I hope that you enjoy them!
- Arha The Priestess Ever Reborn
- The Kargish Lands and Culture
- The Old Powers Of The Earth
- Penthe, Unfaith, and Life
- The Undertombs and Labyrinth
- Making Ged A Slave Of The Tombs
- Erreth-Akbe’s Ring
- Tenar Regains Her Name
- The Power of Trust
- Ged and Tenar’s Escape
- Tenar’s Choice of Life
I hope that you enjoy these videos, and find them useful.
If you’d like to see the sets of videos on the other four books released so far, here they are.
I’m Gregory B. Sadler, the president of ReasonIO, the editor of Stoicism Today, a speaker, writer, and a producer of highly popular YouTube videos on classic and contemporary philosophy. I teach at Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design, and offer classes to the wider public in my Study With Sadler online academy. I also produce the Sadler’s Lectures podcast and co-host the Wisdom for Life radio show