Author: Matthew Beaumont
Publisher: Ralahine Utopian Studies
ISBN: 9783034307253
Category : Literature and society
Languages : en
Pages : 0
Book Description
In the late nineteenth century, a spectre haunted Europe and the United States: the spectre of utopia. This book re-examines the rise of utopian thought at the fin de siècle, situating it in the social and political contradictions of the time and exploring the ways in which it articulated a deepening sense that the capitalist system might not be insuperable after all. The study pays particular attention to Edward Bellamy's seminal utopian fiction, Looking Backward (1888), embedding it in a number of unfamiliar contexts, and reading its richest passages against the grain, but it also offers detailed discussions of William Morris, H.G. Wells and Oscar Wilde. Both historical and theoretical in its approach, this book constitutes a substantial contribution to our understanding of the utopian imaginary, and an original analysis of the counter-culture in which it thrived at the fin de siècle.
The Spectre of Utopia
Author: Matthew Beaumont
Publisher: Ralahine Utopian Studies
ISBN: 9783034307253
Category : Literature and society
Languages : en
Pages : 0
Book Description
In the late nineteenth century, a spectre haunted Europe and the United States: the spectre of utopia. This book re-examines the rise of utopian thought at the fin de siècle, situating it in the social and political contradictions of the time and exploring the ways in which it articulated a deepening sense that the capitalist system might not be insuperable after all. The study pays particular attention to Edward Bellamy's seminal utopian fiction, Looking Backward (1888), embedding it in a number of unfamiliar contexts, and reading its richest passages against the grain, but it also offers detailed discussions of William Morris, H.G. Wells and Oscar Wilde. Both historical and theoretical in its approach, this book constitutes a substantial contribution to our understanding of the utopian imaginary, and an original analysis of the counter-culture in which it thrived at the fin de siècle.
Publisher: Ralahine Utopian Studies
ISBN: 9783034307253
Category : Literature and society
Languages : en
Pages : 0
Book Description
In the late nineteenth century, a spectre haunted Europe and the United States: the spectre of utopia. This book re-examines the rise of utopian thought at the fin de siècle, situating it in the social and political contradictions of the time and exploring the ways in which it articulated a deepening sense that the capitalist system might not be insuperable after all. The study pays particular attention to Edward Bellamy's seminal utopian fiction, Looking Backward (1888), embedding it in a number of unfamiliar contexts, and reading its richest passages against the grain, but it also offers detailed discussions of William Morris, H.G. Wells and Oscar Wilde. Both historical and theoretical in its approach, this book constitutes a substantial contribution to our understanding of the utopian imaginary, and an original analysis of the counter-culture in which it thrived at the fin de siècle.
Planet Utopia
Author: Mark Featherstone
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1351815881
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 260
Book Description
It has become clear that utopian thought has returned to the political scene. Featherstone traces the history of utopia and also discusses a number of contemporary case studies. This examination of the nature of utopian politics in the twenty-first century will be essential reading for political scientists and sociologists.
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1351815881
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 260
Book Description
It has become clear that utopian thought has returned to the political scene. Featherstone traces the history of utopia and also discusses a number of contemporary case studies. This examination of the nature of utopian politics in the twenty-first century will be essential reading for political scientists and sociologists.
Memory and Utopian Agency in Utopian/Dystopian Literature
Author: Carter F. Hanson
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000165957
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 216
Book Description
For a genre that imagines possible futures as a means of critiquing the present, utopian/dystopian fiction has been surprisingly obsessed with how the past is remembered. Memory and Utopian Agency in Utopian/Dystopian Literature: Memory of the Future examines modern and contemporary utopian/dystopian literature’s preoccupation with memory, asserting that from the nineteenth century onward, memory and forgetting feature as key problematics in the genre as well as sources of the utopian impulse. Through a series of close readings of utopian/dystopian novels informed by theory and dialectics, Hanson provides a case study history of how and why memory emerged as a problem for utopia, and how recent dystopian texts situate memory as a crucial mode of utopian agency. Hanson demonstrates that many modern and contemporary writers of the genre consider the presence of certain forms of memory as necessary to the project of imagining better societies or to avoiding possible dystopian outcomes.
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000165957
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 216
Book Description
For a genre that imagines possible futures as a means of critiquing the present, utopian/dystopian fiction has been surprisingly obsessed with how the past is remembered. Memory and Utopian Agency in Utopian/Dystopian Literature: Memory of the Future examines modern and contemporary utopian/dystopian literature’s preoccupation with memory, asserting that from the nineteenth century onward, memory and forgetting feature as key problematics in the genre as well as sources of the utopian impulse. Through a series of close readings of utopian/dystopian novels informed by theory and dialectics, Hanson provides a case study history of how and why memory emerged as a problem for utopia, and how recent dystopian texts situate memory as a crucial mode of utopian agency. Hanson demonstrates that many modern and contemporary writers of the genre consider the presence of certain forms of memory as necessary to the project of imagining better societies or to avoiding possible dystopian outcomes.
The Concept of Utopia
Author: Ruth Levitas
Publisher: Syracuse University Press
ISBN: 9780815625131
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 248
Book Description
Probes the contested concept of utopia, examining the different ways in which it has been used by commentators and theorists in both liberal and Marxist radiations. The works of Karl Mannheim, Georges Sorel, Ernst Bloch, William Morris, and Herbert Marcuse are studied. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR
Publisher: Syracuse University Press
ISBN: 9780815625131
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 248
Book Description
Probes the contested concept of utopia, examining the different ways in which it has been used by commentators and theorists in both liberal and Marxist radiations. The works of Karl Mannheim, Georges Sorel, Ernst Bloch, William Morris, and Herbert Marcuse are studied. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR
The Philosophy of Utopia
Author: Barbara Goodwin
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1136337636
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 272
Book Description
This collection addresses the important function of utopianism in social and political philosophy and includes debate on what its future role will be in a period dominated by dystopian nightmare scenarios.
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1136337636
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 272
Book Description
This collection addresses the important function of utopianism in social and political philosophy and includes debate on what its future role will be in a period dominated by dystopian nightmare scenarios.
The Nationality of Utopia
Author: Maxim Shadurski
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000682870
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 216
Book Description
Since its generic inception in 1516, utopia has produced visions of alterity which renegotiate, subvert, and transcend existing places. Early in the twentieth century, H. G. Wells linked utopia to the World State, whose post-national, post-Westphalian emergence he predicated on English national discourse. This critical study examines how the discursive representations of England’s geography, continuity, and character become foundational to the Wellsian utopia and elicit competing response from Wells’s contemporaries, particularly Robert Hugh Benson and Aldous Huxley, with further ramifications throughout the twentieth century. Contextualized alongside modern theories of nationalism and utopia, as well as read jointly with contemporary projections of England as place, reactions to Wells demonstrate a shift from disavowal to retrieval of England, on the one hand, and from endorsement to rejection of the World State, on the other. Attempts to salvage the residual traces of English culture from their degradation in the World State have taken increasing precedence over the imagination of a post-national order. This trend continues in the work of George Orwell, Anthony Burgess, J. G. Ballard, and Julian Barnes, whose future scenarios warn against a world without England. The Nationality of Utopia investigates utopia’s capacity to deconstruct and redeploy national discourse in ways that surpass fear and nostalgia.
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000682870
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 216
Book Description
Since its generic inception in 1516, utopia has produced visions of alterity which renegotiate, subvert, and transcend existing places. Early in the twentieth century, H. G. Wells linked utopia to the World State, whose post-national, post-Westphalian emergence he predicated on English national discourse. This critical study examines how the discursive representations of England’s geography, continuity, and character become foundational to the Wellsian utopia and elicit competing response from Wells’s contemporaries, particularly Robert Hugh Benson and Aldous Huxley, with further ramifications throughout the twentieth century. Contextualized alongside modern theories of nationalism and utopia, as well as read jointly with contemporary projections of England as place, reactions to Wells demonstrate a shift from disavowal to retrieval of England, on the one hand, and from endorsement to rejection of the World State, on the other. Attempts to salvage the residual traces of English culture from their degradation in the World State have taken increasing precedence over the imagination of a post-national order. This trend continues in the work of George Orwell, Anthony Burgess, J. G. Ballard, and Julian Barnes, whose future scenarios warn against a world without England. The Nationality of Utopia investigates utopia’s capacity to deconstruct and redeploy national discourse in ways that surpass fear and nostalgia.
The Oxford Handbook of Thomas More's Utopia
Author:
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0198881037
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 817
Book Description
Thomas More's Utopia is one of the most iconic, translated, and influential texts of the European Renaissance. This Handbook of specially commissioned and original essays brings together for the first time three different ways of thinking about the book: in terms of its renaissance contexts, its vernacular translations, and its utopian legacies. It has been developed to allow readers to consider these different facets of Utopia in relation to each other and to provide fresh and original contributions to our understanding of the book's creation, vernacularization, and afterlives. In so doing, it provides an integrated overview of More's text, as well as new contributions to the range of scholarship and debates that Utopia continues to attract. An especially innovative feature is that it allows readers to follow Utopia across time and place, unpacking the often-revolutionary moments that encouraged its translation by new generations of writers as far afield as France, Russia, Japan, and China. The Handbook is organized in four sections: on different aspects of the origins and contexts of Utopia in the 1510s; on histories of its translation into different vernaculars in the early modern and modern eras; and on various manifestations of utopianism up to the present day. The Handbook's Introduction outlines the biography of More, the key strands of interpretation and criticism relating to the text, the structure of the Handbook, and some of its recurring themes and issues. An appendix provides an overview of Utopia for readers new to the text.
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0198881037
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 817
Book Description
Thomas More's Utopia is one of the most iconic, translated, and influential texts of the European Renaissance. This Handbook of specially commissioned and original essays brings together for the first time three different ways of thinking about the book: in terms of its renaissance contexts, its vernacular translations, and its utopian legacies. It has been developed to allow readers to consider these different facets of Utopia in relation to each other and to provide fresh and original contributions to our understanding of the book's creation, vernacularization, and afterlives. In so doing, it provides an integrated overview of More's text, as well as new contributions to the range of scholarship and debates that Utopia continues to attract. An especially innovative feature is that it allows readers to follow Utopia across time and place, unpacking the often-revolutionary moments that encouraged its translation by new generations of writers as far afield as France, Russia, Japan, and China. The Handbook is organized in four sections: on different aspects of the origins and contexts of Utopia in the 1510s; on histories of its translation into different vernaculars in the early modern and modern eras; and on various manifestations of utopianism up to the present day. The Handbook's Introduction outlines the biography of More, the key strands of interpretation and criticism relating to the text, the structure of the Handbook, and some of its recurring themes and issues. An appendix provides an overview of Utopia for readers new to the text.
Inventions of Nemesis
Author: Douglas Mao
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691212309
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 298
Book Description
"Examining utopian writings and other texts that focus on ideal societies, from Greek antiquity to the present, this book offers a fresh take on utopian thought. Mao begins with the observation that utopian ideas often are propelled by an angry conviction that society is badly arranged. In an introduction and three long chapters, he argues that utopia's most basic aim has not been to secure happiness, material welfare, or even order, but instead to establish justice, understood as a condition of right arrangement in which all receive what they ought to receive. Mao's analysis, grounded in literary studies, encompasses a broad range of literary and non-literary works, from canonical utopian writings (Plato's Republic, More's Utopia, Bellamy's Looking Backward) to a broad range of other works, including novels and philosophical writings, from Europe and the United States. It considers utopia in relation to the goal of justice, examining at length the question of utopian indignation, and situates utopian imagining in relation to human migration across national boundaries. In the author's view, a rethinking of key assumptions about utopian ideas is important at a time when public interest in utopia is high, and when questions about what an ideal society could mean "have never been more searching.""--
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691212309
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 298
Book Description
"Examining utopian writings and other texts that focus on ideal societies, from Greek antiquity to the present, this book offers a fresh take on utopian thought. Mao begins with the observation that utopian ideas often are propelled by an angry conviction that society is badly arranged. In an introduction and three long chapters, he argues that utopia's most basic aim has not been to secure happiness, material welfare, or even order, but instead to establish justice, understood as a condition of right arrangement in which all receive what they ought to receive. Mao's analysis, grounded in literary studies, encompasses a broad range of literary and non-literary works, from canonical utopian writings (Plato's Republic, More's Utopia, Bellamy's Looking Backward) to a broad range of other works, including novels and philosophical writings, from Europe and the United States. It considers utopia in relation to the goal of justice, examining at length the question of utopian indignation, and situates utopian imagining in relation to human migration across national boundaries. In the author's view, a rethinking of key assumptions about utopian ideas is important at a time when public interest in utopia is high, and when questions about what an ideal society could mean "have never been more searching.""--
Utopia as Method
Author: R. Levitas
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 1137314257
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 443
Book Description
Utopia should be understood as a method rather than a goal. This book rehabilitates utopia as a repressed dimension of the sociological and in the process produces the Imaginary Reconstitution of Society, a provisional, reflexive and dialogic method for exploring alternative possible futures.
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 1137314257
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 443
Book Description
Utopia should be understood as a method rather than a goal. This book rehabilitates utopia as a repressed dimension of the sociological and in the process produces the Imaginary Reconstitution of Society, a provisional, reflexive and dialogic method for exploring alternative possible futures.
Utopia
Author: David Ayers
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN: 3110434784
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 544
Book Description
Utopian hope and dystopian despair are characteristic features of modernism and the avant-garde. Readings of the avant-garde have frequently sought to identify utopian moments coded in its works and activities as optimistic signs of a possible future social life, or as the attempt to preserve hope against the closure of an emergent dystopian present. The fourth volume of the EAM series, European Avant-Garde and Modernism Studies, casts light on the history, theory and actuality of the utopian and dystopian strands which run through European modernism and the avant-garde from the late 19th to the 21st century. The book’s varied and carefully selected contributions, written by experts from around 20 countries, seek to answer such questions as: · how have modernism and the avant-garde responded to historical circumstance in mapping the form of possible futures for humanity? · how have avant-garde and modernist works presented ideals of living as alternatives to the present? · how have avant-gardists acted with or against the state to remodel human life or to resist the instrumental reduction of life by administration and industrialisation?
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN: 3110434784
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 544
Book Description
Utopian hope and dystopian despair are characteristic features of modernism and the avant-garde. Readings of the avant-garde have frequently sought to identify utopian moments coded in its works and activities as optimistic signs of a possible future social life, or as the attempt to preserve hope against the closure of an emergent dystopian present. The fourth volume of the EAM series, European Avant-Garde and Modernism Studies, casts light on the history, theory and actuality of the utopian and dystopian strands which run through European modernism and the avant-garde from the late 19th to the 21st century. The book’s varied and carefully selected contributions, written by experts from around 20 countries, seek to answer such questions as: · how have modernism and the avant-garde responded to historical circumstance in mapping the form of possible futures for humanity? · how have avant-garde and modernist works presented ideals of living as alternatives to the present? · how have avant-gardists acted with or against the state to remodel human life or to resist the instrumental reduction of life by administration and industrialisation?