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https://theconversation.com/guide-to-the-classics-margaret-cavendishs-the-blazing-world-pioneered-speculative-fiction-400-years-ago-263329>
"
The Blazing World is a testament to how far the written novel has travelled
in the past 400 years. A literary time capsule, it holds within it the origins
of a genre we now call speculative fiction.
Written by Margaret Cavendish, a wealthy iconoclast who advocated for women’s
educational opportunities, and published in 1666,
The Blazing World is a
strange work. Testament to this, its full title is
The Description Of A New
World Called The Blazing-World, written by The Thrice Noble, Illustrious, and
Excellent Princess the Duchess of Newcastle.
The novel follows the journey of a woman who lives by the sea and is abducted
by a travelling merchant from a strange land. His boat swiftly heads to the
Arctic, where it threads between the ice and all the men on board freeze to
death.
The North Pole of Earth is connected to the Pole of The Blazing World. Here,
the hapless lady crosses into an alternate landscape where she is rescued by
gentle bear-like creatures. These creatures deliver her as a gift to their
emperor, who believes her a goddess (perhaps because she manages to learn their
language so quickly) and marries her.
From here, the empress swiftly rises to a position of power. She travels
through the land, interrogating representatives of all the various “peoples”
who rule over their domains. These human-animal chimera include bear-men,
worm-men, fish-men, geese-men, ape-men and lice-men.
The empress is the antithesis of a picaresque hero. Rather, she is an entitled
figure with a thirst for new knowledge, unreflective about adopting an
imperialistic leadership role in countries where she has only recently
arrived."
Share and enjoy,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
