The Dystopian Impulse in Modern Literature


Book Description

A detailed discussion of literary dystopias as social criticism in Zamyatin's We, Huxley's Brave New World, Orwell's 1984, and in contemporary works.




The Dystopian Impulse in Modern Literature


Book Description

A detailed discussion of literary dystopias as social criticism in Zamyatin's We, Huxley's Brave New World, Orwell's 1984, and in contemporary works.




Dystopian Literature


Book Description

Dystopian literature is a potent vehicle for criticizing existing social conditions and political systems. While utopian literature portrays ideal worlds, dystopian literature depicts the flaws and failures of imaginative societies. Often these societies are related to utopias, and the dystopian writers have chosen to reveal shortcomings of those social systems previously considered ideal. This reference overviews dystopian theory and summarizes and analyzes numerous dystopian works. By reviewing the critical thought of particular dystopian theorists, the beginning of the volume provides a theoretical context for the remainder of the book. Because dystopian literature is so closely related to utopian writing, the reference profiles and discusses eight important utopian works. The rest of the book includes entries for numerous dystopian novels, plays, and films. Each entry summarizes the work and discusses dystopian themes. The entries include short bibliographies, with full bibliographic information provided at the end of the volume. This comprehensive guide covers the full period from Thomas More's Utopia to the present day.




Swastika Night


Book Description

In a "feudal Europe seven centuries into post-Hitlerian society, Burdekin's novel explores the connection between gender and political power and anticipates modern feminist science fiction."--Cover.




Transformations of Language in Modern Dystopias


Book Description

As the 20th century has progressed, dystopian fiction has gained power as utopian fiction has become increasingly irrelevant. As an overtly didactic genre, dystopia extrapolates terrifying near-futures from disturbing current trends. In order to quickly create an atmosphere that is at once plausible and terrifying, dystopian writers almost universally turn to an idea certain to generate both fear and sympathy in the reader—the dual concept of language as the primary tool by which repressive societies stifle dissent, and simultaneously as the primary weapon used by rebels bent on understanding, resisting, and countering such oppression. This volume traces the evolution of language's centrality in 20th-century dystopias in English, including Brave New World, 1984, A Clockwork Orange, The Handmaid's Tale, Native Tongue, The Judas Rose, and Riddley Walker. The brilliance of Orwell's 1984 has led to a backlash: many critics have smugly asserted that, as the year 1984 has passed without taking the shape of his fiction, Orwell's novel and the dystopia in general have lost their affective power and relevance. But as the 20th century progresses, dystopian fiction has gained power as utopian fiction has become increasingly irrelevant. As an overtly didactic genre, dystopia extrapolates terrifying near-futures from disturbing current trends. In order to quickly create an atmosphere that is at once plausible and terrifying, dystopian writers almost universally turn to an idea certain to generate both fear and sympathy in the reader—the dual concept of language as the primary tool by which repressive societies stifle dissent, and simultaneously as the primary weapon used by rebels bent on understanding, resisting, and countering such oppression. This volume traces the evolution of language's centrality in 20th-century dystopias in English, beginning with Huxley's ^IBrave New World^R and Orwell's ^I1984^R. As dystopian fiction has branched out to embrace multiple viewpoints and agendas, the emphasis on language has remained at the center of the dystopian impulse. These include the first-person narrative dystopia, such as Anthony Burgess's ^IA Clockwork Orange^R; the feminist dystopia, such as Margaret Atwood's ^IThe Handmaid's Tale^R and Suzette Elgin's ^INative Tongue^R and ^IThe Judas Rose^R; and the post-apocalyptic/mythic dystopia, such as Russell Hoban's ^IRiddley Walker^R. While other scholars have often alluded to the importance of language within specific literary dystopias, this book transcends earlier studies by presenting a generic model of dystopian language use.




Utopia/Dystopia


Book Description

The concepts of utopia and dystopia have received much historical attention. Utopias have traditionally signified the ideal future: large-scale social, political, ethical, and religious spaces that have yet to be realized. Utopia/Dystopia offers a fresh approach to these ideas. Rather than locate utopias in grandiose programs of future totality, the book treats these concepts as historically grounded categories and examines how individuals and groups throughout time have interpreted utopian visions in their daily present, with an eye toward the future. From colonial and postcolonial Africa to pre-Marxist and Stalinist Eastern Europe, from the social life of fossil fuels to dreams of nuclear power, and from everyday politics in contemporary India to imagined architectures of postwar Britain, this interdisciplinary collection provides new understandings of the utopian/dystopian experience. The essays look at such issues as imaginary utopian perspectives leading to the 1856-57 Xhosa Cattle Killing in South Africa, the functioning racist utopia behind the Rhodesian independence movement, the utopia of the peaceful atom and its global dissemination in the mid-1950s, the possibilities for an everyday utopia in modern cities, and how the Stalinist purges of the 1930s served as an extension of the utopian/dystopian relationship. The contributors are Dipesh Chakrabarty, Igal Halfin, Fredric Jameson, John Krige, Timothy Mitchell, Aditya Nigam, David Pinder, Marci Shore, Jennifer Wenzel, and Luise White.




Modern Dystopian Fiction and Political Thought


Book Description

Over the past few years, ‘dystopia’ has become a word with increasing cultural currency. This volume argues that we live in dystopian times, and more specifically that a genre of fiction called "dystopia" has, above others, achieved symbolic cultural value in representing fears and anxieties about the future. As such, dystopian fictions do not merely mirror what is happening in the world: in becoming such a ready referent for discussions about such varied topics as governance, popular culture, security, structural discrimination, environmental disasters and beyond, the narrative conventions and generic tropes of dystopian fiction affect the ways in which we grapple with contemporary political problems, economic anxieties and social fears. The volume addresses the development of the narrative methods and generic conventions of dystopian fiction as a mode of socio-political critique across the first half of the twentieth century. It examines how a series of texts from an age of political extremes contributed to political discourse and rhetoric both in its contemporary setting and in the terms in which we increasingly cast our cultural anxieties. Focusing on interactions between temporality, spatiality and narrative, the analysis unpicks how the dystopian interacts with social and political events, debates and ideas, Stock evaluates modern dystopian fiction as a historically responsive mode of political literature. He argues that amid the terrors and upheavals of the first half of the twentieth century, dystopian fiction provided a unique space for writers to engage with historical and contemporary political thought in a mode that had popular cultural appeal. Combining literary analysis informed by critical theory and the history of political thought with archival-based historical research, this volume works to shed new light on the intersection of popular culture and world politics. It will be of interest to students and scholars in literary studies, cultural and intellectual history, politics and international relations.




Memory and Utopian Agency in Utopian/Dystopian Literature


Book Description

This book examines utopian/dystopian fiction's enduring preoccupation with memory, asserting through readings of seminal texts that from the nineteenth century onward, memory and forgetting feature as key problematics in the genre as well as vital sources of the utopian impulse.




Flann O'Brien, Bakhtin, and Menippean Satire


Book Description

This work applies Mikhail Bakhtin's theory of literary discourse and the concept of carnivalisation to the work of Flann O'Brien. The author emphasizes the political and social implications of the writings, arguing that O'Brien maintained a reflexive focus on language throughout his career.




Utopias and Dystopias in the Fiction of H. G. Wells and William Morris


Book Description

This book is about the fiercely contrasting visions of two of the nineteenth century’s greatest utopian writers. A wide-ranging, interdisciplinary study, it emphasizes that space is a key factor in utopian fiction, often a barometer of mankind’s successful relationship with nature, or an indicator of danger. Emerging and critically acclaimed scholars consider the legacy of two great utopian writers, exploring their use of space and time in the creation of sites in which contemporary social concerns are investigated and reordered. A variety of locations is featured, including Morris’s quasi-fourteenth century London, the lush and corrupted island, a routed and massacred English countryside, the high-rises of the future and the vertiginous landscape of another Earth beyond the stars.