Utopian Literature Background Notes
Utopian Dichotomies
Utopia v. (dystopia v. eutopia) ([tongue up] eú-to’pos, où-topos)
Authoritarian v. anti-authoritarian
technological v. anti-technological
extrapolative v. reversing
Representative Utopias
N.B.: a) shift of economic base (Classic: slaves; Renaissance: organization
of labor; Industrial Revolution: machines; Modern Period: problematic); b) change
of normative literary modes; c) modern participation, like Piercy’s Woman
On the Edge of Time (1976), in literary tradition.
- Plato, Republic (c. 380 BCE): Guardians/philosopher-kings; based
on the "necessary lie" and slave labor
- Thomas More, Utopia (1516): gold for mercenaries and chamber pots;
everyone works; possibly ironic
- François Rabelais, "The Abbey of Thélème,"
Gargantua (1534): "Do what thou wilt"
- Valentin Andreae, Christianopolis (1619): medieval cities + Calvin’s
quartered and moral Geneva
- Francis Bacon, The New Atlantis (1627): House of Salomon for scientists
in a 1900-year line from Solamona (n.b.: Novum Organum, 1620)
- Edward Bellamy, Looking Backward (1888): State Capitalism &
Industrial Army
- William Morris, News from Nowhere (1890); free, rich society of
individuals who have no power over each other; medievalist reply to Bellamy
- Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Herland (1915): isolated, feminist, parthenogenetic
utopia highlighting work, safety, and cooperation
- Karel Capek, R.U.R. (1920): the humanoids (robots) turn and kill
their masters
- Eugene Zamiatin, We (1920): Sovietism in extremis: the United State
allows privacy only during "sexual hours" & death is the penalty
for non-conformity
- Aldous Huxley, Brave New World (1932): bottled babies, hypnopaedia,
soma, fun sex, but no love; Savage can’t take it
- B. F. Skinner, Walden Two (1948): operant conditioning for perfect
adaptation to communal life
- George Orwell, 1984 (1949): Newspeak, doublethink, & Winston
Smith’s fear of Big Brother and rats
- Ursula K. LeGuin, The Dispossessed: An Ambiguous Utopia (1974):
"for the partner" on anarchist Anarres v. monopoly capitalist Urras