Utopias and Dystopias
Spring term 2014
Convenor: Peter Boxall
This course explores the production of utopian and dystopian fictions from the
sixteenth century (Thomas More's publication in 1516 of Utopia) to the present day. It
examines the production of utopian images and thought in a number of specific
cultural and historical contexts. These include the sixteenth century context in which
More originally developed the concept of utopia; the production in the eighteenth
century of utopian and dystopian responses to the enlightenment (particularly those of
Swift and Voltaire); The nineteenth century utopian tradition in the US (Hawthorne,
Thoreau); the explosion of utopian thinking at the end of the nineteenth century (with
writers such as Bellamy, Wells and Morris); the relationship between modernism and
utopia (particularly in relation to Woolf and Kafka); the growth of dystopian
responses to modernity in the nineteen thirties and forties (Orwell, Huxley); the
importance of utopian thinking in relation to feminism, from Sarah Scott to
Wollstonecraft to Shelley to Atwood; and the shifting role of utopian and dystopian
thinking in marshalling the political possibilities of literature from the sixties to the
present day.
Throughout this wide ranging course, we will focus closely on a number of central
questions. How far is it possible for literary works to imagine a better or a perfect
world? How far is it possible for such imaginings to effect actual social change? Are
utopian fantasies politically regressive, an opiate to distract us from material social
inequality? What is the role of dystopian thinking? Does dystopian fiction contradict
utopian thought forms, or can dystopian writing produce utopian possibilities? What
is the relationship between utopian thinking and hope? Is there a theological
dimension to utopian thought? What is the relation between science and utopia? In
addressing these questions, the course will offer a means of thinking broadly but
rigorously about the role of literature in transforming social conditions, and making
the world a better place.
Assessment mode
This course is examined by a 6000 word dissertation. The dissertation is to be
submitted on Monday of the end of year assessment week.
Always check online for up to date details of assessment modes and deadlines.
Office Hours
My office hours are Thursday 4-5, and Friday 3-4.
Room: B263
Email: p.boxall@sussex.ac.uk
Summary core reading list
Week 1
Thomas More, Utopia
Week 2
Jonathan Swift, Gulliver's Travels (particularly books 1,2 and 4)
Voltaire, Candide
Week 3
Sarah Scott, Millenium Hall
Charlotte Perkins Gilman, The Yellow-Wallpaper, Herland
Week 4
Henry David Thoreau, Walden (particularly 'Economy')
Nathanael Hawthorne, Blithedale Romance
Herman Melville, Bartleby the Scrivener
Week 5
Edward Bellamy, Looking Backward
H.G. Wells, The Time Machine
Week 6
Franz Kafka, The Burrow
Virginia Woolf, Mrs Dalloway
Week 7
Reading week
Week 8
Aldous Huxley, Brave New World
George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty Four
Week 9
Samuel Beckett, The Lost Ones
J.G. Ballard, The Atrocity Exhibition
Week 10
Margaret Atwood, Oryx and Crake
Richard Powers, 'The Seventh Event'
Week 11
Don DeLillo, Cosmopolis
Cormac McCarthy, The Road
Week 12
Conclusions
Texts available on Study Direct
1: Ernst Bloch and Theodor Adorno, 'Something's Missing', in Ernst Bloch, The
Utopian Function of Art and Literature: Selected Essays (Cambridge: MIT Press,
1996), trans. Jack Zipes
2: Karl Marx, 'Poetry of the Future', from The Eighteenth Brumaire, in Terry Eagleton
and Drew Milne, eds., Marxist Literary Theory (Oxford: Blackwell, 1996)
3:Fredric Jameson, 'Introduction' and 'Varieties of the Utopian', in Fredric Jameson,
Archaeologies of the Future: The Desire Called Utopia and Other Science Fictions
(London: Verso, 2005)
4: Stephen Greenblatt, 'Utopian Pleasure', in Brian Cummings and James Simpson,
eds., Cultural Reformations: Medieval and Renaissance in Literary History (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2010)
5: Charlotte Perkins Gilman, The Yellow Wall-Paper, in Charlotte Perkins Gilman,
The Yellow Wall-Paper, Herland, and Selected Writings (New York: Penguin, 2009)
6: Henry David Thoreau, 'Economy', in Henry David Thoreau, Walden (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1997)
7: Herman Melville, Bartleby the Scrivener, in Herman Melville, The Complete
Shorter Fiction (London: Everyman, 1997)
8: H.G. Wells, The Time Machine, in H.G. Wells, Selected Short Stories
(Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1958)
9: William Morris, 'How We Live and How We Might Live', and 'Useful Work
Versus Useless Toil', in William Morris, Selected Writings and Designs, ed. Asa
Briggs (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1962)
10: Matthew Beaumont, 'State Socialism and Utopia', in Matthew Beaumont, Utopia
Ltd.: Ideologies of Social Dreaming in England 1870-1900 (Leiden: Brill, 2005)
11:Theodor Adorno, 'Aldous Huxley and Utopia', in Theodor Adorno, Prisms
(Cambridge: MIT Press, 1983), trans. Samuel and Shierry Weber
12: Franz Kafka, The Burrow, in Franz Kafka, Metamorphosis and Other Stories
(London: Minerva, 1992)
13: Samuel Beckett, The Lost Ones, in Samuel Beckett, The Complete Short Prose
1929-1989, ed. S.E. Gontarski (New York: Grove Press, 1995)
14: Richard Powers: 'The Seventh Event', from Granta, 90, 2005
Course Outline:
Some general reading on Utopia:
Zygmunt Bauman, 'Utopia with no Topos', in Zygmunt Bauman, Society Under Seige
Ernst Bloch, The Utopian Function of Art and Literature: Selected Essays
Claeys and Sargent, eds., The Utopia Reader
Gregory Claeys, ed., The Cambridge Companion to Utopian Literature
Marianne DeKoven, Utopia Limited: the Sixties and the Emergence of the
Postmodern
Jacques Derrida, 'Not utopia, the im-possible', in Jacques Derrida, Paper Machine
Frederic Jameson, The Seeds of Time
Frederic Jameson, 'Reification and Utopia in Mass Culture', in Social Text I (Winter,
1979), pp. 130-148
Krishan Kumar, Utopianism, and Utopia and Anti-Utopia in Modern Tmes
Ruth Levitas, The Concept of Utopia
Karl Mannheim, Ideology and Utopia, particularly ‘The Utopian Mentality’
Manuel and Manuel, Utopian Thought in the Western World
Manuel, ed. Utopias and Utopian Thought
Herbert Marcuse, ‘The End of Utopia’, in Herbert Marcuse, Five Lectures:
Psychoanalysis, Politics and Utopia
Week 1
The Origins of Utopia
Primary reading
Thomas More, Utopia [1516]
(Recommended edition ed. by George M. Logan and Robert M. Adams, trans. by R.
M. Adams, Cambridge Texts in the History of Political Thought (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2002). This has good introductory material).
Secondary Reading
Francis Bacon, 'New Atlantis' [1627], in Three Early Modern Utopias, Susan Bruce
ed., (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999),
Plato, Republic
On More:
Carlo Ginzburg, No Island is an Island: Four glances at English literature in a world
perspective, trans. by John Tedeschi, Italian Academy Lectures (New York: Columbia
University Press, 2000), ch. 1.
Thomas Healy, ‘Playing Seriously in Renaissance Writing’, in Renaissance
Transformations: The Making of English Writing 1500-1650, ed by Margaret Healy
and Thomas Healy, (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2009), 15-31.
Joseph M. Levine, 'Thomas More and the English Renaissance: history and fiction in
Utopia', in The Historical Imagination in Early Modern Britain: History, rhetoric and
fiction, 1500-1800, ed. by Donald R. Kelley and David Harris Sacks (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1997), pp. 69-92.
Quentin Skinner, 'Sir Thomas More's Utopia and the language of Renaissance
humanism', in The Languages of Political Theory in Early-Modern Europe, ed. by
Anthony Pagden (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), pp. 123-57.
On Bacon:
Denise Albanese, 'The New Atlantis and the uses of utopia', English Literary History,
57 (1990), 503-28.
Bronwen Price, ed. Francis Bacon's The New Atlantis: New interdisciplinary essays
(Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2003).
General.
Stephen Greenblatt, 'Utopian Pleasure', in Cummings and Simpson, eds.,. Cultural
Reformations: Medieval and Renaissance in Literary History (on Study Direct)
Miriam Eliav-Feldon, Realistic Utopias: The ideal imaginary societies of the
Renaissance, 1516-1630 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1982), pp. 31-55 (ch. 2).
J. C. Davis, 'Utopia and the Ideal society: in search of a definition', in Utopia and the
Ideal Society: A Study of English Utopian writing 1516-1700, (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1981), 11-40.
Week 2
Eighteenth Century Utopias
Primary Reading
Jonathan Swift, Gulliver's Travels (Please read all of the novel. In class, we will focus
discussion on Books 1, 2 and 4)
Voltaire, Candide
Secondary Reading
Robert C. Elliott, ‘Swift’s Utopias’ in his The Shape of Utopia (Chicago: Chicago
University Press, 1970), pp.50-67
Ian Higgins, ‘Gulliver’s Travels’ in his Jonathan Swift (Tavistock: Northcote House,
2004), pp.55-81
F. Bottiglia, ed., Voltaire: a Collection of Critical Essays (New Jersey: Prentice Hall,
1968)
Week 3
Feminism and Utopia:
Primary reading
Sarah Scott, Millenium Hall (Broadview) – recommended edition
Charlotte Perkins Gilman, The Yellow-Wallpaper, Herland and Selected Writings
(Penguin Classics) – recommended edition (The Yellow Wallpaper is on Study Direct)
Secondary reading
Brown, Hilary, 'Sarah Scott, Sophie van La Roche, and the female utopian tradition',
Journal of English and Germanic Philology, (100:4) 2001, 469-81
Cruise, James, 'A house divided: Sarah Scott's Millenium Hall', Studies in English
Literature 1500-1900, (35:3) 1995, 555-73
Elliott, Dorice Williams, 'Sarah Scott's Millenium Hall and female philanthropy',
Studies in English Literature 1500-1900, (35:3) 1995, 535-53
Golden, Catherine, The Mixed Legacy of Charlotte Perkins Gilman (University of
Delaware Press, 2000)
Gough, Val, A Very Different Story: Studies on the Fiction of Charlotte Perkins
Gilman (Liverpool University Press, 1998)
London, April, Women and Property in the Eighteenth-Century English Novel
(Cambridge University Press, 1999), chap 7: ‘Versions of Community’
Peace, Mary, '"Epicures in rural pleasures": revolution, desire and sentimental
economy in Sarah Scott's Millenium Hall', Women's Writing, (9:2) 2002, 305-16
Rees, Christie, Utopian Imagination and Eighteenth-Century Fiction (Longman,
1996), esp. chaps 3 and 7
Wynn Allen, Polly, Building domestic liberty: Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s
architectural feminism (University of Massachusetts Press, 1998)
Week 4
American Dreams: Utopian America
Primary Reading:
Nathanael Hawthorne, Blithedale Romance
Herman Melville, Bartleby the Scrivener (on Study Direct)
Secondary Reading:
Henry David Thoreau, Walden
B. F. Skinner, Walden Two (Hackett Publishing Co, Inc; Reprint edition, [1948] 2005)
William Dean Howells. A Traveler from Altruria. New York: Harper & Brothers,
1894. (Twain)
Howard Segal, Technological Utopianism in American Culture (Syracuse University
Press; 2005)
Charles Rooney, Dreams and Visions: Study of American Utopias, 1865-1917
(Greenwood: 1985).
Week 5
Fin de Siecle Utopianism
Primary Reading
Edward Bellamy, Looking Backward
H.G. Wells, The Time Machine (on Study Direct)
Secondary Reading
William Morris, 'How We Live and How We Might Live, and 'Useful Work
versus Useless Toil' (on Study Direct)
Matthew Beaumont, 'State Socialism and Utopia', in Utopia Ltd.: Ideologies of Social
Dreaming in England 1870-1900 (on Study Direct)
Patrick Parrinder 'Shadows of the Future: H.G. Wells, Science fiction and
Prophecy'
Sally Ledger and Roger Luckhurst, eds., The Fin de Siecle 1870-1900
Krishan Kumar Utopia and Anti-Utopia in Modern Times
Week 6
Utopia, Dystopia, Modernism
Primary Reading
Franz Kafka, The Burrow (On Study Direct)
Virginia Woolf, Mrs Dalloway
Secondary Reading
Virginia Woolf, 'The Mark on the Wall', in Virginia Woolf,
Fredric Jameson, 'Modernism Utopia and Death', in Frederic Jameson, The Seeds of
Time
Franz Kafka The Trial
Franz Kafka, The Castle
Ruth V Gross, 'Kafka's Short Fiction', in The Cambridge Companion to Kafka
J. Hillis Miller, 'Mrs Dalloway and the Raising of the Dead', in Showalter, ed., Mrs
Dalloway
Week 7
Reading Week
Week 8:
Dystopia after Modernism
Primary reading
Aldous Huxley, Brave New World
George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty Four
Secondary Reading
Theodor Adorno, 'Aldous Huxley and Utopia', in Theodor Adorno, Prisms
Evelyn Cobley, Modernism and the Culture of Efficiency
John Rodden, The Cambridge Companion to George Orwell
Peter Fitting, 'Utopia, dystopia and Science Fiction', in Claeys, ed., The Cambridge
Companion to Science Fiction
Yevgeny Zamyatin, We
Week 9:
Utopia and Dystopia in the Later Twentieth Century
Primary Reading
Samuel Beckett, The Lost Ones (on Study Direct)
J.G. Ballard, The Atrocity Exhibition
Secondary Reading
Brian McHale, 'Lost in the Mall: Beckett, Federman, Space', in Henry Sussman and
Christopher Devenny, eds., Engagement and Indifference: Beckett and the Political
Peter Boxall, 'How it Ought to Be: Beckett, Globalisation and Utopia', in Peter
Boxall, Since Beckett: Contemporary Writing in the Wake of Modernism
Roger Luckhurst, 'The Atrocity Exhibition and the Problematic of the Avant-garde', in
Roger Luckhurst, The Fiction of J.G. Ballard
Week 10
Utopia, Dystopia and ecocatastrophe
Primary Reading
Margaret Atwood, Oryx and Crake
Richard Powers 'The Seventh Event' (on Study Direct)
Secondary reading
Lawrence Buell. The Environmental Imagination: Thoreau, Nature Writing and the
Formation of American Culture
Ursula Heise, Sense of Place and Sense of Planet: The Environmental Imagination of
the Globe
Margaret Atwood, Year of the Flood
Gerry Canavan, 'Hope, But Not for Us: Ecological Science Fiction and the End of the
World in Margaret Atwood's Oryx and Crake and The Year of the Flood', in
Literature, Interpretation, Theory, 23, 2, 2012
Katherine Snyder, ''Time to go': The post-apocalyptic and the post-traumatic in
Margaret Atwood's Oryx and Crake', in Studies in the Novel, 43, 4, 2012
Week 11
Late Modernism and Utopian Apocalypse
Primary reading
Don DeLillo, Cosmopolis
Cormac McCarthy, The Road
Secondary reading
David Cowart, Don DeLillo: The Physics of Language
Randy Laist, 'The Concept of Disappearance in Don DeLillo's Cosmopolis', in
Critique, 52, 3, 2010
Ken Kearney, 'Cormac McCarthy's The Road and the Frontier of the Human', in
Literature, Interpretation, Theory, vol 23, no 2, 2012
Russell Scott Valentino, 'From virtue to virtual: DeLillo's Cosmopolis and the
corruption of the absent body' in Modern Fiction Studies, 53, 1, 2010
Richard Cronshaw, 'Deterritorializing the "Homeland" in American Studies and
American Fiction after 9/11', Journal of American Studies, 45, 4, 2011
Week 12
Conclusions