Fourteen Videos on Ursula K. Leguin’s Tales From Earthsea
free video lectures exploring themes, plot, characters and the narrative world of Leguin’s fifth Earthsea book
The fifth book in Ursula K. Leguin’s Earthsea saga differs from all of the others in that it is not a novel in the sequence, but rather a collection of shorter stories set within the archipelago. Several of those stories fill in and expand the history of Earthsea in critically important ways. Tales From Earthsea also includes a very interesting supplement, “A Description of Earthsea,” which contains entries on a number of key topics adding considerable depth and clarity to our understanding of that world.
In the class I developed and taught at Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design a year ago, “Philosophy and Fantasy: Ursula K. Leguin’s Earthsea”, we went through each of the stories, devoting two weeks of the class to them. The textbook we used, 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), and places the five Tales From Earthsea stories between the fourth and sixth Earthsea books, relocating the “Description” after The Other Wind.
Just one of the stories, “Darkrose and Diamond”, doesn’t add important information about Earthsea, mages and magic, the Isle of Roke, and conflicts and crises. That story, however, remains well worth reading, if only for the wonderful writer-craft Leguin weaves into that story of love, magic, music, family, and coming-of-age. Of the other four, three of them take place in or close to the time of the other five Earthsea books, the era during which Ged goes to Roke and conquers his shadow, brings Tenar and the Ring from Atuan, becomes archmage, defeats Cobb with Lebannen and is brought back from the land of the dead, without power.
“The Bones of the Earth” fills in the backstory of Ogion, Ged’s teacher and friend on the Isle of Gont, telling us about his apprenticeship with his own master and mentor Dulse, their jointly saving Gont from an earthquake, and a revelation that it was a female wizard Ard who led Ogion’s own master into his understanding of the magic of the earth.
In the longer story “The Finder”, set much earlier, we are transported to a dark time in which wizards serve themselves or local warlords, and a boy who has some talent for magic, Otter or Medra, is enslaved to the mercury-obsessed wizard, Gelluk, and saved by another slave, Anieb. She dies not long after their escape, but her family introduces Otter to an underground, Earthsea-spanning organization run by women, the Hand, which leads him to Roke. We learn in the story how Roke arises as a protected place devoted to teaching and learning magic, and to spreading freedom, truth, and equality through the land.
In “On the High Marsh,” we learn of a broken mage, who came to Roke deeply damaged by his harsh childhood, and who then began using illicit arts to usurp the powers of others. He is now reduced to a seeming simpleton healing cattle, taken in by a widow, until the archmage Ged turns up, seeking him, and we learn his story, which finds a resolution.
The last story, Dragonfly, takes place in between the events of the novels Tehanu and The Other Wind. The girl by that name is given the true name Irian, but there’s something more to her than that, something greatly and almost uniquely more, as we discover when she attempts to sneak into the school at Roke.
For my students, I shot ten lecture videos on these stories, with the exception of “Dragonfly”. I also released them to the general public who might have some interest in the Earthsea novels and stories. In the last week, I returned to filming, and finished out the entire series with four more videos on that last story.
For those who would like to see them all, here they are:
The Finder
- The Dangerous Isles of Earthsea
- Gelluk, Quicksilver, & the King
- Anieb and Medra’s Escape
- Roke, The Hand, and the Pattern
- Roke Takes Students and Masters
Darkrose and Diamond
The Bones Of The Earth
On The High Marsh
Dragonfly
You can find the other sets of videos on the Earthsea novels curated into listings like this one here:
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
