Earthsea

The aim of this work is to bring the light on a topic that generally was, and partly still is, ignored: literary translation. This activity is extremely complicated because it deals with the culture behind texts. As a matter of fact, it seems to be very intricate to render the extratextual meanings and references of a book: many shades of the sense could be misunderstood by a reader if he or she is not from the same country as the author. Translators' mission is to reduce these losses or misinterpretations using different techniques, depending on the level of fidelity to the authentic text, which will be illustrated below. Moreover, translators feel always in balance between the original book, that is the embodiment of the author's opinion and style, and their own voice. It is a common belief that, to obtain a good translation, they must abolish their method of writing in order to respect the writer's approach and become invisibles. This is probably the reason why currently translators are not well known, they are considered writers' shadows and their works are merely seen as copies. In any case, recently the situation has slowly changed and, for example, nowadays it is more frequent to find translators' names on the covers of books. In this work, after a detailed description of what fantasy genre is and how it has developed through the years, the analysis centred around the translation of this kind of publications and their diffusion. An important investigation is related to the remarkable spread of this type of books in Italy and additionally to the habitual prejudices connected to fantasy. Thereafter, the study focuses on Ursula K. Le Guin (1929-2018), an American writer who dedicated her life to support science fiction and fantasy novels. Moreover, she was a translator and an activist. In fact, all her books are extremely innovative because they deal with significant themes as feminism,

Abstract. The late Ursula K. Le Guin was a woman of strong convictions: liberty,
equality of rights, and the dignity of the human being were her dicta. She did not
only defend women's rights but the rights of every human being. The acceptance
of the Other played a primary role in her writings. The revolutions she introduced
in the genre of contemporary fantasy literature, mainly the profound shift of focus
from the male perspective of the hero myth to include a feminine point of view and
centrality and the transformation of narrative time structure are the reason to have
chosen to center this analysis on the Earthsea cycle.
Keywords: Earthsea, dragons, women, death, time.

George R. R. Martin’s series of novels A Song of Ice and Fire (henceforth ASoIaF) represents one of the most successful fantasies of all times. Ben Smith, Head of Books for publishing company Rebellion, admitted in an interview that nowdays ‘George Martin sells more books than the en-tire science fiction and fantasy section sells together’.  The popularity of the Game of Thrones series can be assigned to many factors, but in this essay I will focus my attention especially on its melding of high fantasy elements – which draw on the Tolkien tradition – with low fantasy ones. Particularly, I will show how this peculiar aspect of ASoIaF can be seen in the way magic is depicted, as it shares a lot of elements with the notion of magic typical of sword and sorcery.

Abstract. The late Ursula K. Le Guin was a woman of strong convictions: liberty, equality of rights, and the dignity of the human being were her dicta. She did not only defend women's rights but the rights of every human being. The acceptance of the Other played a primary role in her writings. The revolutions she introduced in the genre of contemporary fantasy literature, mainly the profound shift of focus from the male perspective of the hero myth to include a feminine point of view and centrality and the transformation of narrative time structure are the reason to have chosen to center this analysis on the Earthsea cycle. Keywords: Earthsea, dragons, women, death, time.