Utopia and its discontents : Plato to Atwood / Sebastian Mitchell.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Mitchell, Sebastian, 1959- author.

Contributor:

Alumni and Friends Memorial Book Fund.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Utopias in literature.

Literature--History and criticism.

Literature.

Genre:

Criticism, interpretation, etc.

Physical Description:

255 pages : illustrations (black and white) ; 24 cm

Edition:

Paperback edition.

Place of Publication:

London ; New York : Bloomsbury Academic, 2022.

Summary:

"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. This is an essential study for scholars and students of utopian literature." -- from publisher's website.

Contents:

Machine generated contents note: 1. Plato versus Plato: Art and Idealism

2. Oxymorus: Thomas More and Utopia

3. Hippophilia: Swift, Kant, and Eighteenth-Century Utopia

4. The Machine Age: Carlyle to Morris

5. English Triptych: Wells, Huxley, Orwell

6. Post-Utopia: America in the 1970s

7. Atwood's Scar; or, the Origins of Ustopia.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 229 - 244) and index.

Local Notes:

Acquired for the Penn Libraries with assistance from the Alumni and Friends Memorial Book Fund.

ISBN:

9781441109637

1441109633

OCLC:

1259525139