Orsinian Tales

Orsinian Tales
AuthorUrsula K. Le Guin
CountryUnited States
LanguageEnglish
PublisherHarper & Row United States
Publication date
1976
Media typePrint (hardcover)
Pages179 pp
ISBN0-06-012561-6
OCLC2331143

Orsinian Tales is a collection of eleven short stories by American writer Ursula K. Le Guin. Most of them happen in Le Guin's imaginary country called Orsinia.

Most of the stories do not share events or characters. All the stories are emotional personal events. Many are romantic. Larger political events such as wars and revolutions are happening in all of the stories. Le Guin writes about each person's right to his or her own thoughts and emotions. In the stories, Le Guin shows that these emotions should not be controlled by society, rules, or the State.

Orsinia

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The stories are set in a fictional country somewhere in Central Europe. Stories happen between 1150-1965. "Orsinia"is in Le Guin's earliest writings,[1][2] Le Guin invented Orsinia when she was a young adult learning to write.[3] The names Orsinia and Ursula both come from the Latin word ursus meaning "bear" (ursula = diminutive of ursa "female bear"; ursinus = "bear-like"). Le Guin once said that since Orsinia was her own country it should have her name.[4]

Contents

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  • "The Fountains"
  • "The Barrow" (1976, The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, October 1976)
  • "Ile Forest"
  • "Conversations At Night"
  • "The Road East"
  • "Brothers and Sisters" (1976, The Little Magazine, Vol. 10, Nos. 1 & 2)
  • "A Week in the Country" (1976, The Little Magazine, Vol. 9, No. 4)
  • "An die Musik" (1961, The Western Humanities Review, Vol XV, No. 3)
  • "The House"
  • "The Lady of Moge"
  • "Imaginary Countries" (1973, The Harvard Advocate)

References

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Notes
  1. ↑ "Folksong from the Montayna Province," Prairie Poet (Charleston, Ill.), Fall 1959, p 75.
  2. ↑ "An die Musik," Western Humanities Review, 15 (1961): 247-58.
  3. ↑ Elizabeth Cummins, Understanding Ursula K. Le Guin, rev. ed., (Columbia, SC: Univ of South Carolina Press), 1993, pp. 126-7. ISBN 0-87249-869-7.
  4. ↑ James W. Bittner, "Persuading Us to Rejoice and Teaching Us How to Praise: Le Guin's Orsinian Tales," Science Fiction Studies, no. 16 Vol. 5, Part 3 (Nov. 1978).
Bibliography
  • Cadden, Mike (2005). Ursula K. Le Guin Beyond Genre: Fiction for Children and Adults (1st ed.). New York, NY: Routledge. ISBN 0-415-99527-2.