Reading Tamora Pierce: 'The Protector of the Small'

John Lennard

Description

Reading Tamora Pierce The Protector of the Small John Lennard genre fiction sightlines humanities-Ebooks Using this Ebookt *7KLV ERRN LV GHVLJQHG WR EH UHDG LQ VLQJOH SDJH YLHZ XVLQJ WKH µ¿W page’ command. *To navigate through the contents use the hyperlinked ‘Bookmarks’ at the left of the screen. *To search, click the search symbol. *For ease of reading, use to enlarge the page to full screen, and return to normal view using . *Hyperlinks (if any) appear in Blue Underlined Text. Permissions Your purchase of this ebook licenses you to read this work on-screen. You may print a copy of the book for your own use but copy and paste functions are disabled. No part of this publication may be otherwise reproduced or transmitted or distributed without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the publisher. This work is copyright. Making or distributing copies of this book would constitute copyright infringement and would be liable to prosecution. Thank you for respecting the rights of the author. Genre Fiction Sightlines Reading Tamora Pierce, The Protector of the Small John Lennard HEB ʏHumanities-Ebooks.co.uk Copyright Text © John Lennard 2013 Quotations from private correspondence with Tamora Pierce © Tamora Pierce 2013, quoted with permission.

Sujets

• Literary Criticism
• European

Informations

• Publié par: Humanities eBooks
• Date de parution: 11 janvier 2021
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781847602459
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 2 Mo

Extrait

Reading TamoraPierce

TheProtector oftheSmall

John Lennard genre fiction sightlines humanitiesEbooks

Using this Ebookt

*This book is designed to be read in single page view, using the ‘ît page’ command. *To navigate through the contents use the hyperlinked ‘Bookmarks’ at the left of the screen. *To search, click the search symbol. *For ease of reading, use <CTRL+L> to enlarge the page to full screen, and return to normal view using < Esc >. *Hyperlinks (if any) appear in Blue Underlined Text.

Permissions

Your purchase of this ebook licenses you to read this work on-screen.

You may print a copy of the book for your own use but copy and paste functions are disabled.

No part of this publication may be otherwise reproduced or transmitted or distributed without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the publisher.

This work is copyright. Making or distributing copies of this book would constitute copyright infringement and would be liable to prosecution. Thank you for respecting the rights of the author.

Genre Fiction Sightlines

Reading Tamora Pierce, The Protector of the Small

John Lennard

HEB☼Humanities-Ebooks.co.uk

Copyright

Text © John Lennard 2013 Quotations from private correspondence with Tamora Pierce © Tamora Pierce 2013, quoted with permission.

The Author has asserted his right to be identiîed as the author of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patent Act 1988.

First published by Humanities-Ebooks, LLP, Tirril Hall, Tirril, Penrith CA10 2JE

No copyright is claimed in any image except that of the late Dr Michael Lennard used in the dedication. Those used in the text are in the public domain, or available under Creative Commons Licences, and may be remixed or reused under the same conditions.

Quotations from PROTECTOR OF THE SMALL: FIRST TEST by Tamora Pierce, copyright © 1999 by Tamora Pierce, PROTECTOR OF THE SMALL: PAGE by Tamora Pierce, copyright © 2000 by Tamora Pierce, PROTECTOR OF THE SMALL: SQUIRE by Tamora Pierce, copyright © 2001 by Tamora Pierce, and PROTECTOR OF THE SMALL: LADY KNIGHT by Tamora Pierce, copyright © 1999 by Tamora Pierce, are used by permission of Random House Children’s Books, a division of Random House, Inc. Any third party use of this material, outside of this publication, is prohibited. Interested parties must apply directly to Random House, Inc. for permission.

Cover image: Composite îfteenth-century German armour at the Royal Armouries, Leeds, UK. Picture credit: Gidzy ISBN 9781847602459 Pdf Ebook ISBN 9781847602466 Paperback ISBN 9781847602473 Kindle Ebook

This e-book is dedicated to the memory of my father,

Michael Briart Lennard 1922–1986 who let me read his books when I ran out of my own on holiday and taught me more about them and the world than I can ever say, but died before I could know him as an adult. I believe that, despite a technology he would have hated, he would like what it tries to do for reading and for thinking about what you read.

Contents

Acknowledgments

1. Notes 1.1Tamora Pierce 1.2 The World of Tortall 1.3 ‘Protector of the Small’ 1.4Boarding Schools and Boot Camps 1.5Chivalry and knighthood 1.6Kel’s animals

2. Annotations 2.1First Test 2.2Page 2.3Squire 2.4Lady Knight

3. EssayThe Making of Mindelan Tamora Pierce’s Marvellous Schools of Knighthood and Reading

4. A Note on ‘Protector of the Small’ Fanîction

A Necessary Legal Note

5. Bibliography 4.1 Works by Tamora Pierce 4.2 Works about Tamora Pierce and Children’s Writing 4.3 Websites

A Note on the Author

7

8 8 10 25 31 35 38

40 40 63 84 121

155

155

172

182

183 183 186 187

188

Acknowledgments

The author would like to thank warmly Tamora Pierce for her gener- ous help and comments, and, with her agent, Craig Tenney of Harold Ober Associates, for assistance in securing permissions; and to thank the authors mentioned in the note on fanîc—FFN-users Taxie, Silverlake, Dark Rose of Heaven, Fateless Wanderer, Ally-Marty, Sulia Seraîne, Quatre-Sama, Starzgirl, Lionesseyes13, Lela of Bast, Sirladyknight, and ConfusedKnight—for commenting on their work and granting permission for it to be cited.

1. Notes

1.1Tamora Pierce

Tamora Pierce was born in December 1954 in South Connellsville, Fayette County, Pennsylvania, a coal-mining area. Neither of her parents’ families were well-off but her mother was studying towards a degree and intended to teach, while her father worked for the telephone company, so there were both a steady income and plenty of books around. Tamora was the eldest child; sisters Kimberley (b.1960) and Melanie (b.1961) followed, and there was a large extended family who cared for and shared with one another. But there were also tensions with and snob- beries from her mother’s family, who were class-conscious and found her father’s family vulgar rather than warm. In 1963 her father got a job in California and took his immediate family west. For six years, with the 1960s in full swing, Pierce grew up around San Francisco, where the district known as Haight- Ashbury was at the centre of US hippy culture. Though young and by her own account ‘geeky’, much liberalism rubbed off, especially where traditional restrictions on women were concerned. Home- life was difîcult, though, and it may partly have been as a defence against the strain of living with her parents’ failing marriage that she began inventing stories initially fuelled by TV SF and drama. “I was telling myself stories, but I didn’t begin to write them down until my father caught me telling stories to myself one day as I did dishes. This was in early 1966, I think. He suggested that I write a book instead and even loaned me his typewriter. He also suggested an idea that he knew I would like, because he shared books he liked with me: a time

Protector of the Small

9

travel story.” (TP, email to the author) In 1965 Tolkien’sThe Lord of the Ringshad come out in the US in paperback, and Pierce (led to it by a canny teacher) became a serious fantasy reader and thinker. But in 1969 her parents’ marriage ended and she moved with her mother back to Fayette County, and genuine poverty. Writing was Pierce’s great ambition, but she ran into a severe writer’s block in tenth grade, lasting several years, so when in 1972 she went to Penn State University on full scholarship it was to read psychology with a plan of working with teenagers. She graduated in 1977 with a general degree, difîculty with statistics having forestalled psychology, and moved to central New York, before living in Idaho for a while with her father. The writer’s block had lifted at college, and Pierce had taken some writing courses. Stories owed again, and by 1976–7 she had completed a long fantasy novel for adult readers, but was unable to get it published. She did sell occasional stories, but for income in Idaho worked as a Housemother, cannibalising bits of her novel for stories to tell the girls she looked after. Moving to Manhattan, she held jobs in a literary agency and later a radio production company, but everything began to change when an agent suggested turning the long fantasy novel for adults into a quartet for teenagers. Alanna: The First Adventure came out in 1983 and its sequels followed, completing the quartet under the general title ‘Song of the Lioness’. The books were well-received and, after marriage to Tim Liebe in 1985, Pierce began astonishingly to develop the world she had created. Two further quartets (‘The Immortals’, 1992–6, ‘The Protector of the Small’, 1999–2002) were followed by a duology (‘The Daughter of the Lioness’, 2003–04), a trilogy (‘The Provost’s Dog, 2006–11), and a collection of stories (Tortall and Other Lands, 2011). Amid all this Pierce also created a second world in her ‘Circle’ books, of which two quartets and two free-standing novels have appeared since 1997. She has also co-written with Tim Liebe a Marvel graphic novel,White Tiger(2007). The grand total to date is 27 novels in 28 years, plus the collected stories, that together have won Pierce a formidable international following and wide praise. Pierce has no children, but a lively extended family of nephews,

10

Reading Tamora Pierce

nieces, great-nephews and the like provide an audience (as well as many distractions). She and her husband also keep a fair-sized menagerie of cats and birds, and in 2006 moved out of Manhattan to upstate New York, where there are more trees, space, and cats to rescue.

1.2 The World of Tortall

1.2.1 The Five Tortall Series

The world of Tortall was created in three quartets, a duology, and a trilogy. (The duology is almost as long as the quartets, and Pierce has thanked J. K. Rowling for making longer books for young adults acceptable.) There is also a collection of short stories, all but îve of which are tales of Tortall. In order of publication, these are: ‘Song of the Lioness’ Alanna: The First Adventure(1983) In the Hand of the Goddess(1984) The Woman Who Rides Like a Man(1986) Lioness Rampant(1988) ‘The Immortals’ Wild Magic(1992) Wolf-Speaker(1994) The Emperor Mage(1995) The Realms of the Gods(1996) ‘The Protector of the Small’ First Test(1999) Page(2000) Squire(2001) Lady Knight(2002) ‘The Daughter of the Lioness’ Trickster’s Choice(2003) Trickster’s Queen(2004) ‘The Provost’s Dog’ Terrier(2006)