On 24 July, 1997, Erik Tsao wrote:
>Speaking of female quest narratives, I had a student this morning present
>on an essay on Orson Scott Card's _Ender's Game_ series. The essay used
>Otto Rank's concept of the hero monomyth to examine the Card series. Of
>course, Card is not really a feminist sf writer, but the concept of the
>monomyth is interesting especially since it can be seen as the primary
>structure in many quest narratives. In fact, two of the novels I taught
>that could be called feminist, Elizabeth Moon's _Sheepfarmer's Daughter_,
>and Joan D. Vinge's _The Snow Queen_ do follow this format. The problem of
>course is that you could probably reduce all quest narratives to this
>formalist theory thus over-simplifying the text. In any case, what do you
>all think?
Sorry to take so long to respond; I was gone again. I agree that most
fantasy and SF can be boiled down to a basic quest narrative. In this
case, I'd ask your student to use Rank's ideas as a tool to get at the
heart of Card's book. For instance, does Card change or embellish any of
the stages? How? Why? How are male interests versus female interests
served in that book within the monomyth framework? (I always liked
Valentine and thought she got shafted by the story.) Things like that. As
I may have said, I think Annis Pratt's book Archetypal Patterns in Women's
Fiction is a good counterpart to the work done by Campbell, etc., and I see
some women SF authors really turning quest narratives around in some recent
books, so things like that might be good for perspective.
Elizabeth
-- Elizabeth L. Pandolfo/Briggs pandolfo@macbsd.com http://www.macbsd.com/~pandolfo/index.html"Whatever happens, believe that the journey is worth taking..." --Pesh, "Seaward"
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