Download or read book The Perverse Utopia Exploring its Fiction Philosophy and Social History written by Alan Greenhalgh and published by Lulu.com. This book was released on 2012 with total page 142 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book critically examines the relationship between man and society in Utopian systems. In order to do this, the author reviews a selection of Utopian and dystopian literature. There are excerpts from fiction, philosophy, social and political history, and an appraisal of the relevant issues. Various topics relating to Utopia such as harmony, freedom and its expression, conflict, machines and thought, homosexual rights to marriage, the future of world languages, the function of religion and God, social control and democracy are explored with a view to investigating man's conflict with himself and society. Many of these issues are relevant not only to today but to the 22nd century too. This book provides a thought-provoking addition to the body of literature on the subject.
Download or read book Reincarnation and Misfortune in Old Modern Japan An Investigation of Traditional Beliefs and Modern Thought Including the Hatsushiba Transcripts written by Alan Greenhalgh and published by Lulu.com. This book was released on 2017-06-11 with total page 174 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book examines the history of reincarnation in Japan and shows how the idea has developed over time. It looks at exactly what reincarnation is and where it originated. The book also examines reincarnation and tradition, reincarnation and psychology and analyses reincarnation in the context of religion. It offers some curious tales from Japanese history which offer detailed explanations of real incidents of rebirth. The book also looks at the Japanese media and the occult in the modern age. Western views of reincarnation and Eastern Buddhist and Shinto views are also investigated. The book's purpose is to both inform serious students of Japanese history, Japanese religions and reincarnation and the wider public who have an abiding interest in all things Asian, and in particular the customs and traditions of Japan.
Download or read book The Spectre of Utopia written by Matthew Beaumont and published by Ralahine Utopian Studies. This book was released on 2012 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book Utopia written by Thomas More and published by Good Press. This book was released on 2023-12-03 with total page 113 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Utopia is a work of fiction and socio-political satire by Thomas More published in 1516 in Latin. The book is a frame narrative primarily depicting a fictional island society and its religious, social and political customs. Many aspects of More's description of Utopia are reminiscent of life in monasteries.
Download or read book Strange Vistas written by Justyna Galant and published by Mediated Fictions. This book was released on 2019 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The volume demonstrates the scope of utopian thinking and the enduring significance of past utopian fictions and historical events. The essays examine the concept of utopia in a variety of contexts, such as philosophy, translation, music, social and political issues, and global utopian fiction.
Download or read book The Palgrave Handbook of Utopian and Dystopian Literatures written by Peter Marks and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2022-03-15 with total page 721 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Palgrave Handbook of Utopian and Dystopian Literatures celebrates a literary genre already over 500 years old. Specially commissioned essays from established and emerging international scholars reflect the vibrancy of utopian vision, and its resiliency as idea, genre, and critical mode. Covering politics, environment, geography, body and mind, and social organization, the volume surveys current research and maps new areas of study. The chapters include investigations of anarchism, biopolitics, and postcolonialism and study film, art, and literature. Each essay considers central questions and key primary works, evaluates the most recent research, and outlines contemporary debates. Literatures of Africa, Australia, China, Latin America, and the Middle East are discussed in this global, cross-disciplinary, and comprehensive volume.
Download or read book The Philosophy of Utopia written by Barbara Goodwin and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2012-12-06 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book Defined by a Hollow written by Darko Suvin and published by Peter Lang. This book was released on 2010 with total page 624 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Darko Suvin explores utopian horizons in fiction & utopian/dystopian readings of historical reality since the 1970s, focusing in the United States & United Kingdom, but drawing also on French, German & Russian sources.
Download or read book Archaeologies of the Future written by Fredric Jameson and published by Verso Books. This book was released on 2020-05-05 with total page 688 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In an age of globalization characterized by the dizzying technologies of the First World, and the social disintegration of the Third, is the concept of utopia still meaningful? Archaeologies of the Future, Jameson's most substantial work since Postmodernism, Or, the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism, investigates the development of this form since Thomas More, and interrogates the functions of utopian thinking in a post-Communist age. The relationship between utopia and science fiction is explored through the representations of otherness . alien life and alien worlds . and a study of the works of Philip K. Dick, Ursula LeGuin, William Gibson, Brian Aldiss, Kim Stanley Robinson and more. Jameson's essential essays, including "The Desire Called Utopia," conclude with an examination of the opposing positions on utopia and an assessment of its political value today.
Download or read book Visions of Utopia written by Edward Rothstein and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2003-02-06 with total page 106 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the sex-free paradise of the Shakers to the worker's paradise of Marx, utopian ideas seem to have two things in common--they all are wonderfully plausible at the start and they all end up as disasters. Three leading cultural critics look at the history of utopian thinking, exploring why they fail and why they are still worth pursuing.
Download or read book Utopia written by Alistair Fox and published by . This book was released on 1993 with total page 154 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Thomas More's Utopia remains indisputably the most potent work in the genre of writing that it initiated and in fact named. Since it was published in 1516 - in a Tudor-ruled England responding to the wave of humanist thought sweeping across Europe - this fantasy voyage has inspired centuries of social reformers, who have embraced More's fiction as a realistic blueprint for a new, ideal society. On the literary side, writers from Jonathan Swift to George Orwell have plied the genre More invented, and yet none has arrived at a conclusion more prophetic than the original: that the dogged quest for an imagined ideal generates doubt that this ideal would be as attractive in practice as in theory, and that, given what we know of human nature, such an ideal could ever be implemented. In Utopia: An Elusive Vision Alistair Fox places More's masterwork in the context of the reform aspirations of early-sixteenth-century European humanists, tracing the stages of its composition to show how and why the book came to be inherently paradoxical and showing us why the book in many ways presaged the rise of Martin Luther and the watershed Protestant Reformation. Fox lucidly explores the complex, equivocal nature of More's vision, which, he contends, was conditioned not only by More's recognition that people's desire for ideal social order conflicts with many of their most basic impulses but also by his propensity for seeing most issues simultaneously from contradictory perspectives. This paradox and tension led More to create a fiction that, according to Fox, allows human imperfection to interrogate the validity of the "ideal" society the fiction presents, without confirming or subverting it. With UtopiaMore encourages readers to explore what he reveals to be a perpetual dilemma in utopianism itself. Fox concludes that, by thus encompassing and provoking the full range of reactions that subsequent utopias and "dystopias" would likely elicit, More's Utopia is both the prototype and epitome of the utopian genre itself. Fox's engaging study is the most extensive treatment of Utopia to date, examining the work as one which evolved in response to More's changing emotional perceptions and treating More's text as a vehicle for intellectual exploration rather than a definitive proclamation. Utopia: An Elusive Vision, replete with historical detail and an overview of criticism of More's text through four centuries, allows readers to discern for themselves the features that contribute to Utopia's intellectual and rhetorical complexity.
Download or read book Utopia Unlimited written by Angela Warfield and published by . This book was released on 2017-02-26 with total page 255 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Utopia Unlimited, completed at the dawn of President Barack Obama's campaign for the presidency, hearkens back to the rhetoric of hope, promise, and idealism that unified and inspired millions of Americans to dream again. This edition arrives at the dawn of a new era--the Trump presidency. The theories, readings, and critique in this study are more prescient than ever. Every candidate promises a "brave new world" and inspires legions of voters to follow their lead. Sometimes these worlds are built on courage, innovation, and hope; sometimes their foundations are fear, cowardice, and complacency. Some candidates deliver on promises more than others. Of course, the Trump administration is in its infancy and the impact of his presidency remains to be seen. If history has any lessons to teach us, the waxing and waning of promises, dreams, lies, and nightmares is the rhythm of American politics and life. Utopian and dystopian authors have long charted this territory and Utopian Unlimited argues that American literary utopias of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, from Edward Bellamy's Looking Backward (1888) and William Dean Howells' Altrurian Romances (1907) to Aldous Huxley's Island and Ursula K. LeGuin's The Dispossessed (1974), offer a unique narrative site to approach the ethical and political concerns of postmodernity. Literary utopias are conventionally read as either dogmatic and totalitarian schemes or impractical and fanciful dreams; they are interpreted as representations of an archetypal ideology. I contend that these conventional interpretations overlay and belie an essentially post-ideological irony and ambivalence inherent in the neologism "utopia"--the "good place" (eu-topos) that is simultaneously "no place" (ou-topos). Utopian narratives remain unfinished projects whose political and ethical potential resides in the suspension of utopia's realization, a notion discussed in Jacques Derrida's exploration of the irony and ultimate ethical significance of an idea that cannot be fully presented or realized (diff�rance), a space that cannot be traversed (a-poria), and of a community-to-come engendered by these notions. Accordingly, these readings of American literary utopias disclose narrative characteristics, from temporal instability to radical shifts in points of view, to show that the value of utopian literature lies in its exploration of alternative possibilities without prescribing finite and present solutions. Utopia Unlimited will offer readers hope in the face of an uncertain future.Utopia Unlimited is a reexamination of the utopian tradition in American Literature from the 19th century to the present that posits a new theory of utopianism based on the intent of the titular work by Sir Thomas More. The works of famous utopian writers from Edward Bellamy to Aldous Huxley are explored in detail and the utopian criticism sheds light on where America, and humanity, may be headed in the 21st century. If you are interested in American Literature, Utopia, Dystopia, Politics, Philosophy, or Ethics, you will appreciate this examination of the utopian tradition and the promise utopian philosophy holds for the millennium.
Download or read book Whitherward Hell Or Utopia 1921 written by Victor Branford and published by . This book was released on 2008-06 with total page 132 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of the original. Due to its age, it may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment for protecting, preserving, and promoting the world's literature in affordable, high quality, modern editions that are true to the original work.
Download or read book Utopia and Its Discontents written by Sebastian Mitchell and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2020-02-20 with total page 267 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Utopia and Its Discontents traces literary representations of ideal communities from Plato to the 21st century. Each chapter offers close readings of key utopian and anti-utopian texts to demonstrate how they construct, challenge and explore the ideas and forms of earlier utopian writings and the social and political ideals of their own periods. In this original and insightful study, Sebastian Mitchell demonstrates how literary utopias are often as much about the past as they are about the present and the future. Utopia and Its Discontents concludes by arguing against the idea that the utopian has been eclipsed by the dystopian in contemporary culture. Topics covered include: - Early political and philosophical authors, such as Plato and Thomas More - Literary works, from Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels to George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four - Speculative-fiction writers such as H.G. Wells, Aldous Huxley and Margaret Atwood - Ecological and feminist texts by Ernest Callenbach, Ursula Le Guin and Marge Piercy - Twenty-first century utopianism This is an essential study for scholars and students of utopian literature.
Download or read book Utopia written by Gregory Claeys and published by . This book was released on 2020-01-09 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Aspirations for a better - even a perfect - society have existed throughout history, often imagined in intricate detail by philosophers, poets, social reformers, architects and artists. This book explores a perennially powerful idea: the quest for the ideal society. Gregory Claeys surveys the influence of the idea of Utopia on history. Central to his exploration of ideal worlds are creation myths; archetypes of heaven and the afterlife; new worlds and voyages of discovery; ages of revolution and technological progress; model communities and kibbutzim; political and ecological dystopias; space travel and science fiction. The most significant utopias throughout history - whether envisaged or attempted - are covered, including visions of the ideal society in the West as well as American, Asian, African and the Arab worlds. From classical times to the present day, this compelling book traces the enduring human need to imagine and construct ideal worlds.
Download or read book Utopia Ltd written by Matthew Beaumont and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2005-03-01 with total page 227 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This literary-historical account of late-nineteenth century utopianism offers a fascinating rereading of the fin de siècle in terms of the political futures that were produced in England during a period of cultural upheaval, and marks an original contribution to the Marxist critique of utopian ideology.
Download or read book Modern Utopian Fictions from H G Wells to Iris Murdoch written by Peter Edgerly Firchow and published by CUA Press. This book was released on 2007 with total page 232 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Criticism on utopian subjects has generally neglected the literary or fictional dimension of utopia. The reason for such neglect may be that earlier utopian fictions tended to be written by what one would nowadays call social scientists, e.g., Plato or Sir Thomas More. That is also why earlier discussions of utopian fiction were usually written by critics trained in the social sciences rather than by critics trained in literature. To an appreciable degree this still tends to be the case today. Now, however, there is an additional difficulty, for the social scientists are critiquing utopias written by people who are primarily literary, for example, Krishan Kumar on Wells or Bernard Crick on Orwell. Inevitably much of importance--of literary importance--is simply disregarded, and so our understanding of modern utopia is correspondingly diminished. This book aims to put the fiction back into utopian fictions. While tracing the development of fiction in the writing of modern utopias, especially in Britain, it seeks to demonstrate in specific ways how those utopias have become increasingly literary--possibly as a reaction not only against the "social scientification" of modern utopias but also in reaction against the modern attempt to institute "utopia" in reality, notably in the former Soviet Union but also in consumerist, late-twentieth-century America. After an introductory discussion of how we understand--and how we should understand--modern utopian fictions, the book provides several examples of how those understandings affect our appreciation of utopian fiction. There are chapters on H. G. Wells's Time Machine; Bernard Shaw's Major Barbara; Aldous Huxley's Brave New World; George Orwell's Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four; William Golding's Lord of the Flies; and Iris Murdoch's The Bell. ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Peter Edgerly Firchow, internationally recognized scholar and author of numerous works including Reluctant Modernists, W. H. Auden: Contexts for Poetry, Envisioning Africa: Racism and Imperialism in Conrad's "Heart of Darkness," and The End of Utopia, is professor of English at the University of Minnesota. "Firchow includes much that is praiseworthy in this short book on utopian fiction. . . . Firchow's work displays his very well informed explication and his ability, in most instances, to make literary texts come alive. His treatment of Wells's The Time Machine is simply outstanding. . . . I find his enthusiasm for his texts refreshing and his work on the end of history meticulous. Other scholars of utopian fiction will as well." -- H-Net Reviews "Utopian fiction has often been mangled in interpretation on the occasions when it has been read without a sense of irony, for the sake of political analysis, disregarding its artistic nature. To counterpoise such approaches, Firchow offers us a close reading of each of the chosen works, while also placing them in literary context," -- Janice Rossen, Partial Answers
