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1
Garcia, Kristina. "Examining the proximity of power structures in dystopian and anti-utopian literature." FIU Digital Commons, 2011. https://digitalcommons.fiu.edu/etd/3866.
Full textAbstract:
The purpose of this research is to examine power in dystopian and anti-utopian literature as it relates to the proximity of power structures in relation to the populace. This research uses The Handmaid's Tale, by Margaret Atwood; Nineteen Eighty-Four, by George Orwell; and Brave New World by Aldous Huxley to explore the different methods of gaining and maintaining power employed by the ruling parties in these texts. The research demonstrates an arrangement of control as it relates to implementing, solidifying, and perpetuating a hegemonic structure within a civilization. The conclusion of this research reveals an evolution of power, from physical to psychological to technological in the bid to maintain control over an extended span of time and shows the ruling party to be able to remove themselves from proximity by employing ever more invasive techniques of control.
2
Bakker, Barbara. "Arabic dystopias in the 21st century : A study on 21st century Arabic dystopian fiction through the analysis of four works of Arabic dystopian narrative." Thesis, Högskolan Dalarna, Arabiska, 2018. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:du-27968.
Full textAbstract:
Dystopian fiction as intended in the Western literary tradition is a 20 th century phenomenon on the Arabic literary scene. This relatively new genre has been experiencing an uplift since the beginning of the 21st century and many works that have been defined dystopias have been published and translated into English in the last 10 – 15 years. In order to find out their main features, Claeys’s categorization of literary dystopias is applied and a thematic analysis is carried out on four Arabic dystopian works of narrative, written by authors from different parts of the Arabic world. The analysis shows that 21st century Arabic dystopias are political dystopias, with totalitarianism as their main variation. Rather than on society, their focus is on the individual, and more specifically on personal freedom. The totalitarian constraints are mainly caused by religious fundamentalism and bureaucratic procedures. Surveillance and control over population are implemented by means of religious precepts and bureaucratic constructions, together with, in some instances, control over language and technological devices. Political totalitarianism regardless of a specific political ideology is identified as main theme. The thesis suggests that a Western-based classification framework is only partially suitable for Arabic dystopian fiction of the 21st century and that further research, including but not limited to a specific classification theory for Arabic dystopian fiction, is necessary to properly investigate this new literary trend in Arabic literature.
3
Garvey, Brian Thomas. "Literature of utopia and dystopia : technological influences shaping the form and content of utopian visions." Doctoral thesis, University of Bradford, 1985. http://hdl.handle.net/10454/4225.
Full textAbstract:
We live in an age of rapid change. The advance of science and
technology, throughout history, has culminated in periods of transition
when social values have had to adapt to a changed environment. Such
times have proved fertile ground for the expansion of the imagination.
Utopian literature offers a vast archive of information concerning the
relationship between scientific and technological progress and social
change.
Alterations in the most basic machinery of society inspired utopian
authors to write of distant and future worlds which had achieved a state
of harmony and plenty. The dilemmas which writers faced were particular
to their era, but there also emerged certain universal themes and
questions: What is the best organisation of society? What tools would
be adequate to the task? What does it mean to be human?
The dividing line on these issues revolves around two opposed
beliefs. Some perceived the power inherent in technology to effect the
greatest improvement in the human condition. Others were convinced that
the organisation of the social order must come first so as to create an
environment sympathetic to perceived human needs. There are,
necessarily, contradictions in such a division. They can be seen plainly
in More's Utopia itself. More wanted to see new science and technique
developed. But he also condemned the social consequences which
inevitably flowed from the process of discovery. These consequences led
More to create a utopia based on social reorganisation. In the main,
the utopias of Francis Bacon, Edward Bellamy and the later H. G. Wells
accepted science, while the work of William Morris, Aldous Huxley and
Kurt Vonnegut rejected science in preference for a different social order.
More's Utopia and Bacon's New Atlantis were written at a time when
feudal, agriciTfural society wasbeeing transformed by new discoveries
and techniques. In a later age, Bellamy's Looking Backward and Morris's
News From Nowhere offer contrary responses to society at the height of
the Industrial evolution. These four authors serve as a prelude to the
main area of the thesis which centres on the twentieth century. Wells,
though his first novel appeared in 1895, produced the vast bulk of his
work in the current century. Huxley acts as an appropriate balance to
Wells and also exemplifies the shift from utopia to dystopia. The last
section of the thesis deals with the work of Kurt Vonnegut and includes
an interview with that author.
The twentieth century has seen the proliferation of dystopias,
portraits of the disastrous consequences of the headlong pursuit of
science and technology, unallied to human values. Huxley and Vonnegut
crystallised the fears of a modern generation: that we create a
soulless, mechanised, urban nightmare. The contemporary fascination
with science in literature is merely an extension of a process with a
long tradition and underlying theme. The advance of science and
technology created the physical and intellectual environment for utopian
authors which determined the form and content of their visions.
4
Garvey, Brian T. "Literature of utopia and dystopia. Technological influences shaping the form and content of utopian visions." Thesis, University of Bradford, 1985. http://hdl.handle.net/10454/5026.
Full textAbstract:
We live in an age of rapid change. The advance of science and
technology, throughout history, has culminated in periods of transition
when social values have had to adapt to a changed environment. Such
times have proved fertile ground for the expansion of the imagination.
Utopian literature offers a vast archive of information concerning the
relationship between scientific and technological progress and social
change.
Alterations in the most basic machinery of society inspired utopian
authors to write of distant and future worlds which had achieved a state
of harmony and plenty. The dilemmas which writers faced were particular
to their era, but there also emerged certain universal themes and
questions: What is the best organisation of society? What tools would
be adequate to the task? What does it mean to be human?
The dividing line on these issues revolves around two opposed
beliefs. Some perceived the power inherent in technology to effect the
greatest improvement in the human condition. Others were convinced that
the organisation of the social order must come first so as to create an
environment sympathetic to perceived human needs. There are,
necessarily, contradictions in such a division. They can be seen plainly
in More's Utopia itself. More wanted to see new science and technique
developed. But he also condemned the social consequences which
inevitably flowed from the process of discovery. These consequences led
More to create a utopia based on social reorganisation. In the main,
the utopias of Francis Bacon, Edward Bellamy and the later H. G. Wells
accepted science, while the work of William Morris, Aldous Huxley and
Kurt Vonnegut rejected science in preference for a different social order.
More's Utopia and Bacon's New Atlantis were written at a time when
feudal, agricultural society was being transformed by new discoveries
and techniques. In a later age, Bellamy's Looking Backward and Morris's
News From Nowhere offer contrary responses to society at the height of
the Industrial evolution. These four authors serve as a prelude to the
main area of the thesis which centres on the twentieth century. Wells,
though his first novel appeared in 1895, produced the vast bulk of his
work in the current century. Huxley acts as an appropriate balance to
Wells and also exemplifies the shift from utopia to dystopia. The last
section of the thesis deals with the work of Kurt Vonnegut and includes
an interview with that author.
The twentieth century has seen the proliferation of dystopias,
portraits of the disastrous consequences of the headlong pursuit of
science and technology, unallied to human values. Huxley and Vonnegut
crystallised the fears of a modern generation: that we create a
soulless, mechanised, urban nightmare. The contemporary fascination
with science in literature is merely an extension of a process with a
long tradition and underlying theme. The advance of science and
technology created the physical and intellectual environment for utopian
authors which determined the form and content of their visions.
5
Varsamopoulou, Maria. "Before Utopia : the function of sacrifice in dystopian narratives." Thesis, University of Nottingham, 2010. http://etheses.nottingham.ac.uk/3771/.
Full textAbstract:
The aim of this study is to illustrate the ways in which the practice and logic of sacrifice in dystopian narratives is anti-utopian. There is a dearth of research on the dystopian fiction, very little which investigates ethical issues and none which consider sacrificial ethics. In the first half of the thesis, the concept of dystopia is delineated against definitions of utopia, concrete utopia and utopian literature. In the second theoretical chapter, major and minor theories of sacrifice are examined for their normative bias in order to question their function in practice. Two important literary examples are read in light of a cross section of sacrifice and utopia: the influential story of Isaac's near sacrifice by Abraham in Genesis 22, and Ursule Molinaro's The New Moon with the Old Moon in her Arms, a literary depiction of the ancient Greek sacrificial ritual of the 'pharmakos'. The works chosen are canonical examples of the genre and in each a different aspect of sacrifice is foregrounded. In George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four, the structure of sacrifice and the rigid hierarchy it imposes engenders perpetual violence. In Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale, women's sacrifice of reproductive freedom renders them commodities which cannot sustain friendships. In Octavia Butler's Kindred, the scapegoating of women slaves prevents vertical relationships as a result of the severing of mothers from their offspring. In the final chapter, Ursule Le Guin's 'The Ones who Walk Away from Ornelas' and Lois Lowry's The Giver foreground the cost of utopia based on a sacrificial ethics and problematises the relationship between self and community. The questions of genre, gender, and ethics intersect at the anti-utopian function sacrifice performs in the totalitarian societies foregrounded in the various manifestations of dystopian fictional worlds.
6
Bakker, Barbara. "Arabic dystopias in the 21st century : A study on 21st century Arabic dystopian fictionthrough the analysis of four works of Arabic dystopian narrative." Thesis, Högskolan Dalarna, Arabiska, 2018. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:du-28495.
Full textAbstract:
Dystopian fiction as intended in the Western literary tradition is a 20 th century phenomenon on the Arabic literary scene. This relatively new genre has been experiencing an uplift since the beginning of the 21 st century and many works that have been defined dystopias have been published and translated into English in the last 10 – 15 years. In order to find out their main features, Claeys’s categorization of literary dystopias is applied and a thematic analysis is carried out on four Arabic dystopian works of narrative, written by authors from different parts of the Arabic world. The analysis shows that 21 st century Arabic dystopias are political dystopias, with totalitarianism as their main variation. Rather than on society, their focus is on the individual, and more specifically on personal freedom. The totalitarian constraints are mainly caused by religious fundamentalism and bureaucratic procedures. Surveillance and control over population are implemented by means of religious precepts and bureaucratic constructions, together with, in some instances, control over language and technological devices. Political totalitarianism regardless of a specific political ideology is identified as main theme. The thesis suggests that a Western-based classification framework is only partially suitable for Arabic dystopian fiction of the 21 st century and that further research, including but not limited to a specific classification theory for Arabic dystopian fiction, is necessary to properly investigate this new literary trend in Arabic literature.
7
Ivanovici, Cristina. "In search of Utopia : a study of the role of German and Romanian academic and literary communities in the production and evaluation of Margaret Atwood’s Utopian/Dystopian fiction." Thesis, University of Birmingham, 2011. http://etheses.bham.ac.uk//id/eprint/1716/.
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This study investigates the contribution of Romanian and German academic and literary communities to the formation of readerships for Margaret Atwood’s dystopian fiction and examines various conceptualisations of the Canadian writer as a literary celebrity in Romania and Germany by taking into account the response to and institutionalisation of the writer’s literary dystopias in the two countries both before and after the fall of communism in 1989. It aims to demonstrate that publishing, translation and cultural policies complicate the cultural reception of Margaret Atwood’s dystopian fiction in Eastern European countries and re-evaluates critical representations of Eastern European readerships and publishing contexts as invisible within the global literary field. By investigating the strategies which publishers, editors and translators employed in the dissemination and institutionalisation of Atwood’s work in Romania and Germany, this thesis examines paradigm shifts both in translation, publishing and marketing strategies and conceptualisations of literary celebrity as shaped by cultural state policies. To this end, the first chapter highlights representations of literary markets and readerships in the Atwood archive, and analyses how the Atwood literary archive values celebrity and translation. The second chapter charts the first translation projects which were carried out in both East Germany and communist Romania and points out how forms of censorship have impacted upon the production, dissemination and circulation of her work in translation. The third chapter draws upon interviews with Romanian academics and examines teaching and reading practices employed within a post-communist context. Finally, the study suggests how further examinations of the response to both Canadian and dystopian fiction within Eastern European contexts might proceed.
8
Sirutis, Lukas. "Utopian thought as an expression of social and political critique." Master's thesis, Lithuanian Academic Libraries Network (LABT), 2013. http://vddb.laba.lt/obj/LT-eLABa-0001:E.02~2013~D_20130605_155436-57816.
Full textAbstract:
This thesis explores and connects two main elements: the utopian studies and the studies of social and political critique. The big quantity and variety and history of utopian texts raises a simple question: why someone writes utopian texts, why one wishes for a better and different life? And how do these factors operate in the large picture of humanity. It has been observed that utopian literature flourish in the times of human despair. In the times of unhappiness people try to search for decisions inside the dominant order in which they often feel hopeless to change. The utopians might say: “We do not want reforms, we want new forms!”. The main purpose of this thesis is to explore the critical side of utopias. How this critique works and how does it unfolds? What reactions does it create and why? This thesis is also concerned about the ambiguous nature of the concept utopia and its possible connections with human desire. If we agree with Deleuze and Guattari concept of desire as production, we can view utopia totally differently – as a immanent process of becoming, as a direction, not a destination.Šis magistro darbas apžvelgia ir apjungia du pagrindinius šio darbo elementus: utopijų studijos ir socialinė bei politinė kritika. Didelis kiekis įvairiausių utopinių tekstų kelia klausimą: kodėl žmonės rašo utopinius tekstus ir apskritai kodėl svajoja apie geresnį ir kitokį gyvenimą? Istoriškai pastebime, kad utopijų rašymas intensyviausiai atsiskleidžia per negandų ir nelaimių laikus. Neaiškumo ir nelaimės akivaizdoje žmonės ieško būdų radikaliai pakeisti esamą padėtį, bet dažnai susiduria su valstybinio aparato stagnacija. Utopistas sakytų: „Užteks politinių reformų, mes norime naujų formų!”. Pagrindinis šio darbo tikslas orientuojasi į kritinė utopinio mąstymo pusę. Kaip veikia utopinė kritika? kaip ji išsiskleidžia? Kokias reakcijas sukelia utopinis mąstymas ir kodėl? Šis darbas taip pat gilinasi į sąvokos „utopija“ problematiką. Jei mes sutinkame su Deleuze ir Guattari geismo, kaip nepertraukiamos produkcijos sąvoka, mes galime atsakyti daug klausimų dėl utopinio mąstymo įvairoves, taip pat pažiūrėti į ją iš kito kampo – kaip į imanentišką tapsmo procesą, kuris turį krypti, bet ne galutinę atvykimo vietą.
9
Charléz, Sara. ""A Mere Dream Dreamed in a Bad Time" : A Marxist Reading of Utopian and Dystopian Elements in Ursula K. Le Guin's Always Coming Home." Thesis, Umeå universitet, Institutionen för språkstudier, 2018. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:umu:diva-156031.
Full textAbstract:
In Ursula K. Le Guin’s novel Always Coming Home, utopian and dystopian elements interact according to patterns inspired by anarchism and Taoism to criticise material excesses and oppressive social structures under capitalism. Via discussions of gender, state power, and forms of social (re)production, this Marxist reading proposes that the novel’s separation of utopia from dystopia hinges on the absence or presence of a state. The reading also suggests that the novel’s utopia is by its own admission a “mere dream” with limited relevance to anti-capitalist politics, and employs the novel’s own term “handmind” to show that the aesthetic and philosophical dimensions of its anti-capitalist sentiments encourage a reconsideration of utopia, to be viewed not as a fixed future product – a good-place – but as a constant process of becoming – a no-place.
10
Welstead, Adam. "Dystopia and the divided kingdom : twenty-first century British dystopian fiction and the politics of dissensus." Thesis, University of St Andrews, 2019. http://hdl.handle.net/10023/17104.
Full textAbstract:
This doctoral thesis examines the ways in which contemporary writers have adopted the critical dystopian mode in order to radically deconstruct the socio-political conditions that preclude equality, inclusion and collective political appearance in twenty-first century Britain. The thesis performs theoretically-informed close readings of contemporary novels from authors J.G. Ballard, Maggie Gee, Sarah Hall and Rupert Thomson in its analysis, and argues that the speculative visions of Kingdom Come (2006), The Flood (2004), The Carhullan Army (2007) and Divided Kingdom (2005) are engaged with a wave of contemporary dystopian writing in which the destructive and divisive forms of consensus that are to be found within Britain's contemporary socio-political moment are identified and challenged. The thesis proposes that, in their politically-engaged extrapolations, contemporary British writers are engaged with specifically dystopian expressions of dissensus. Reflecting key theoretical and political nuances found in Jacques Rancière's concept of 'dissensus', I argue that the novels illustrate dissensual interventions within the imagined political space of British societies in which inequalities, oppressions and exclusions are endemic - often proceeding to present modest, 'minor' utopian arguments for more equal, heterogeneous and democratic possibilities in the process. Contributing new, theoretically-inflected analysis of key speculative fictions from twenty-first century British writers, and locating their critiques within the literary, socio-political and theoretical contexts they are meaningfully engaged with, the thesis ultimately argues that in interrogating and reimagining the socio-political spaces of twenty-first century Britain, contemporary writers of dystopian fiction demonstrate literature working in its most dissensual, political and transformative mode.
11
Silva, Diogo Cesar Nunes da. "Histórias do futuro e a arte do pensar-contra: utopia, esperança e pessimismo distópico." Universidade do Estado do Rio de Janeiro, 2011. http://www.bdtd.uerj.br/tde_busca/arquivo.php?codArquivo=5875.
Full textAbstract:
Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado do Rio de JaneiroA protagonista do presente trabalho, a Utopia, a arte do pensar-contra, foi apresentada e definida, nas sendas da Filosofia da Esperança de Ernst Bloch, como uma consciência antecipadora que não se conforma com o está-aí das coisas, com a realidade fática; e como um logos, linguagem-ação que cria furos no tempo saltando para-adiante, para o topos-outro. Negativa e Esperançosa, ela representa a verdade-de-fora: não é o irreal, pois existe. E a existência do topos de fora, o topos-outro, se justifica pelo fato de que a vida e o mundo não são sistemas fechados, porque seus horizontes estão em aberto: atravessados por possibilidades, ainda-não-são. Contra o que é estático, o que é fatal e fático, se posiciona o sonho utópico, abrindo espaços no fluxo do mesmo. Ao fazê-lo, cria duas frentes reciprocamente reais: o aqui-e-agora de quem sonha e o aqui-e-agora do sonho, o u-topos. Assim, tanto seu caráter de projeção ao porvir quanto, na sua base, o descontentamento com o atual, revelam seu comprometimento com o presente. Negando e afirmando a história, transformou-se em conteúdo e, sobretudo, forma, de Morus a Fourrier, de Marx a Orwell. E é por comprometer-se com o futuro, o presente e o passado, que, nos tempos sombrios do início do século XX, ela subverte a si mesma e faz vir ao mundo sua versão pessimista: a Distopia. Articulando e fazendo dialogarem as obras distópicas de Orwell, Aldous Huxley e Jerome K. Jerome com os pensamentos de Adorno, Marcuse, Horkheimer, Hannah Arendt, Karl Kraus e Walter Benjamin, tentamos encaminhar a pergunta originária da nossa pesquisa: é possível uma utopia pessimista? Será este pessimismo, ainda, uma Utopia?
12
Viteri, Marquez Elisa Andrea. "Literary masculinities in contemporary Egyptian dystopian fiction : Local, regional and global masculinities as social criticism in Utopia and The Queue." Thesis, Stockholms universitet, Institutionen för Asien-, Mellanöstern- och Turkietstudier, 2020. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:su:diva-184262.
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In the aftermath the 25th January Revolution of 2011, two Egyptian dystopian novels stand out as particularly relevant: Utopia (2008) by Ahmed Khaled Towfik, and The Queue (2013), by Basma Abdel Aziz. Due to the absence of studies that pay attention to how gender relations are portrayed in Arabic dystopian novels, this study focuses on the literary representation of men and masculinities in Utopia and The Queue. This thesis uses narratology and content analysis in order to show that, although patterns of local masculinities are different in both novels, regional and global models of masculinity clearly point out men as controlling, violent and hypersexual, which is supported by multiple institutions, such as the state, media, and the religious establishment. The inclusion of relevant ethnological studies of masculinities in Egypt confirms that the social criticism of the novels include gender relations, and refers to the time in which the novels were written. This study points out the need for recognizing Arabic dystopian fiction as a valuable instrument that carries meaningful and intricate social criticism, as well as the need for the inclusion of gender as a category of literary analysis.
13
Llewellyn, Jana Diemer. "Rape in feminist utopian and dystopian fiction Joanna Russ's The female man, Margaret Atwood's The handmaid's tale, and Octavia Butler's The parable of the sower and The parable of the talents /." Click here for download, 2006. http://wwwlib.umi.com/cr/villanova/fullcit?p1432523.
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Ågren, Mattias. "Phantoms of a Future Past : A Study of Contemporary Russian Anti-Utopian Novels." Doctoral thesis, Stockholms universitet, Slaviska institutionen, 2014. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:su:diva-108169.
Full textAbstract:
The aim of this dissertation is to study the evolution of the Russian anti-utopian literary genre in the new post-Soviet environment in the wake of the defunct Soviet socialist utopia. The genre has gained a renewed importance during the 2000s, and has been used variously as a means of dealing satirically with the Soviet past, of understanding the present, and of pondering possible courses into the future for the Russian Federation. A guiding question in this study is: What makes us recognize a novel as anti-utopian at a time when the idea of utopia may appear obsolete, when the hegemony of nation states has been challenged for several decades, and when art has been drawn towards the aesthetics of hybridity? The main part of the dissertation is comprised of detailed analyses of three novels: The Slynx (Kys', 2001) by Tatyana Tolstaya; Homo Zapiens/Babylon (Generation ‘P’, 1999) by Viktor Pelevin; and Ice Trilogy (Ledianaia Trilogiia, 2002−2005) by Vladimir Sorokin. The further development of the genre is subsequently discussed on the basis of seven novels published in the past decade. A main argument in the dissertation is that the genre has been modified in ways which can be seen as a response to social and political changes on a global scale. The waning power of the nation state, in particular, and its broken monopoly as the bearer of social projects marks a new context, which is not shared by the classic works of the genre. Analysis of this evolution in post-Soviet anti-utopian novels draws on sociological as well as literary studies. The dissertation shows how the analysed novels use the possibilities of the genre to problematize various forms of societal discourse, and how these discourses work as mutations of utopia. Prominent among these are historical discourses, which reflect the increasing importance of historical narratives in public political debates in the Russian Federation.
15
Tiengo, A. "OVER THE BRINK OF ENVIRONMENTAL COLLAPSE. POWER, RELIGION, AND NATURE IN MARGARET ATWOOD¿S MADDADDAM TRILOGY." Doctoral thesis, Università degli Studi di Milano, 2016. http://hdl.handle.net/2434/360628.
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Margaret Atwood’s writings have been the subject of many critical studies from different theoretical angles, which outline the diverse and composite quality of the Canadian author’s literary explorations. The publication of the MaddAddam trilogy – Oryx and Crake (2003), The Year of the Flood (2009), and MaddAddam (2013) – have opened yet another critical perspective, which is that of science fiction or, as Atwood herself defines it, speculative fiction. Moving from the Canadian roots of Atwood’s speculative texts and from the debate with Ursula K. Le Guin on science fiction, this study employs the interpretative tools provided by ecocriticism and posthumanism to investigate Atwood’s trilogy as a single and accomplished body of work. In the second chapter, devoted to Oryx and Crake, I explore the developments of Atwood’s lifelong interest in the nature and politics of power, and I argue that she employs parody as a subverting strategy that questions roles and discourses involved in power relations. In the third chapter, I analyze The Year of the Flood as an investigation in the religious roots of culture, which represents a bulwark against the ruthless dreams – or nightmares – of scientific and technological progress. Lastly, I engage with the critical discourses on nature and on the environmental crisis, to attain the conclusion that, in MaddAddam, hybridity and a revived awareness of the power of narration represent a strategy of survival. Ultimately, my goal lies in analyzing Atwood’s aesthetic responses to the urgency of the environmental crisis, which rely on the tools of storytelling and on the playful use of language. At bottom, I argue that these tools serve as aesthetic responses to the threat of a dystopian future.
16
Taylor, Deborah. "Reading utopian narratives in a dystopian time." College Park, Md.: University of Maryland, 2008. http://hdl.handle.net/1903/8014.
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Thesis (Ph. D.) -- University of Maryland, College Park, 2008.Thesis research directed by: Dept. of English. Title from t.p. of PDF. Includes bibliographical references. Published by UMI Dissertation Services, Ann Arbor, Mich. Also available in paper.
17
Nienaber, J. E. "Distopie in die grafiese roman : V for Vendetta as voorbeeld." Thesis, Stellenbosch : Stellenbosch University, 2008. http://hdl.handle.net/10019.1/21688.
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Thesis (MPhil)--Stellenbosch University, 2008.ENGLISH ABSTRACT: This thesis examines the genre of dystopian fiction in the graphic novel, V for Vendetta in which a futuristic police state, run by a totalitarian regime is portrayed. Since V for Vendetta draws on a number of other dystopian texts, New Historicist theory is employed which begins its analysis of literary texts by attempting to look at other texts as well as the historical context in which it originated, to aid in the understanding of that text. Therefore, V for Vendetta with its thorough character development and multi-dimensional storyline that the larger format of the graphic novel allows, is studied alongside other highly regarded novels. The characteristics of the nightmarish anti-utopia is identified and analysed in V for Vendetta by looking at real examples of totalitarian regimes from history. The chapters are divided into what I identified as the main themes of the totalitarian dystopia. Chapter one explains the concept of the utopia in order to grasp the concept of dystopia, and more specifically, the Totalitarian dystopia. Chapter two looks at the social structure of V for Vendetta as well as the common Totalitarian dystopia. Chapter three discusses the issue of censorship which is a recurring theme in dystopian fiction. Chapter four examines the manner in which the totalitarian regime manipulates the populace of the dystopia through propaganda. Chapter five discusses the systems of surveillance and lack of privacy in the Totalitarian dystopia and a chapter on the protagonist in dystopia concludes this study.
AFRIKAANSE OPSOMMING: In hierdie studiestuk word die genre van distopiese fiksie in die grafiese roman, V for Vendetta behandel, wat ’n futuristiese polisiestaat teen die agtergrond van ’n totalitêre staatsbestel uitbeeld. Omdat V for Vendetta by soveel ander distopiese tekste leen, word dit vanuit die teoretiese oogpunt van New Historicism bestudeer, wat in die ontleding van ’n roman ander tekste asook die geskiedkundige konteks van daardie roman ondersoek, ten einde dit beter te begryp. Daarom word V for Vendetta, wat vanweë die grafiese roman se langer formaat wat ruimte skep vir deeglike karakterontwikkeling en ’n veelvlakkige storielyn, as volwaardige roman naas ander hoogaangeskrewe romans behandel. Aan die hand van ware voorbeelde van totalitêre regimes uit die geskiedenis word die eienskappe eie aan ’n nagmerriestaat in V for Vendetta geïdentifiseer en geanaliseer en dit is waardeur ek my laat lei het ten opsigte van die hoofstukindeling. In hoofstuk een word die begrip van utopie eers duidelik gemaak om die distopie, en meer spesifiek die Totalitêre distopie te verstaan. In hoofstuk twee word daar gekyk na die sosiale samestelling en magstruktuur binne V for Vendetta en die Totalitêre distopie in die algemeen. Hoofstuk drie bespreek die kwessie van sensuur - ’n gewilde tema in distopiese fiksie. In hoofstuk vier word ondersoek ingestel na die manier waarop die Totalitêre-distopie die burgery breinspoel deur propaganda. Hoofstuk vyf bespreek die verskynsel van bewaking en die skending van privaatheid in die totaliêre distopie en in die sesde hoofstuk word daar gefokus op die protagonis in die distopie.
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Cavalcante, Francisco Wilton Lima. "Sons de um futuro impreciso: a utopia dos Ensaios de Josà Saramago." Universidade Federal do CearÃ, 2015. http://www.teses.ufc.br/tde_busca/arquivo.php?codArquivo=16909.
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CoordenaÃÃo de AperfeiÃoamento de Pessoal de NÃvel SuperiorAs discussões sobre utopia, costumeiramente, partem da obra que deu origem a essa palavra: Utopia, de Thomas More, no mesmo molde de enredo dâA cidade do sol, de Tommaso Campanella, e Nova Atlântida, de Francis Bacon â o relato de viagem a uma ilha âperfeitaâ. A esse debate junta-se o da distopia, termo criado nas primeiras décadas do século XX, pelo editor J. Max Patrick, que seria o oposto da utopia. Os estudos sobre o tema, no entanto, vão muito além dessas obras, e permitem diálogo com a literatura distópica, incluindo os gêneros a ela relacionados, como a ficção científica e a pós-apocalíptica, agregando narrativas que fogem ao enredo do relato de viagem, comumente apontado como o gênero literário utópico por excelência. Assim, o estudo das concepções de utopia, e das representações utópicas ou distópicas, incluindo as literárias, é possível em narrativas as mais distintas. Nesta pesquisa, propomos uma análise dos romances Ensaio sobre a cegueira (1995) e Ensaio sobre a lucidez (2004), do escritor português José Saramago (1922-2010), a partir da utopia. O Ensaio sobre a cegueira defende a organizaÃÃo como uma experiÃncia ainda nÃo vivida â essa à sua utopia; é a personagem âmulher do médicoâ que permite os deslocamentos dessa busca. Nesse romance, as personagens são desafiadas a imaginar outro mundo, o qual se contrapõe radicalmente ao mundo conhecido. Nos dois livros, são apresentados os valores fundamentais da nova sociedade. Esses romances dialogam muitas vezes, quando questionam a suposta organização e os modelos supostamente democráticos em que vivemos, mostrando que ainda não nos organizamos e que ainda não vivenciamos a democracia, pois, no Ensaio sobre a lucidez, essa sociedade âdemocráticaâ é representada como uma distopia. Ao negar-se a imaginar um novo mundo como fizeram os utopistas projetistas, que desenhavam milimetricamente suas propostas de sociedade, Saramago não tinha outra saída senão escutar, e converter para nós em suas ficções, os sons imprecisos do futuro.
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Ribeiro, Ana Claudia Romano. "A ilha dos hermafroditas : viagem a França especular de Henrique III." [s.n.], 2005. http://repositorio.unicamp.br/jspui/handle/REPOSIP/269845.
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Orientador: Carlos Eduardo Ornelas BerrielDissertação (mestrado) - Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Instituto de Estudos da Linguagem
Made available in DSpace on 2018-08-04T02:35:08Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Ribeiro_AnaClaudiaRomano_M.pdf: 5070136 bytes, checksum: 05d1b5f943f628fdb1b2b8966418f6d5 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2005
Resumo: O objetivo deste trabalho de mestrado é traduzir e estudar A Ilha dos Hermafroditas, obra em geral classificada junto a panfletos e à literatura polêmica, que, segundo Claude-Gilbert Dubois, inaugura o gênero utópico na França e, ao mesmo tempo, contém em si a primeira anti-utopia francesa. Artus Thomas, seu provável autor, não segue a estrutura paradigmática do texto de Thomas Morus, apresentando em um mesmo texto três partes distintas: uma anti-utopia de teor satírico, um poema panfletário e um discurso apologético, - a utopia propriamente dita. Para Pierre Bayle, trata-se de uma sátira engenhosa da corte de Henrique III, o último Valois, rei que se vestia de modo efeminado e vivia cercado de mignons com quem tinha uma relação confidencial. O alcance deste texto, de grande riqueza simbólica, vai, porém, além do tema sexual. Sua principal chave de leitura é a figura do hermafrodita, que, saído da área da teratologia médica, toma valor simbólico e pode ser transposto a diferentes áreas, especialmente à ideologia e à política, designando uma forma de oportunismo moral, econômico, filosófico e político, encoberto por uma ambigüidade de conduta e de discurso. Há neste libelo uma crítica ao estetismo maneirista derivado do naturalismo renascentista, em que o autor procura descobrir os vícios da natureza denunciando, ao mesmo tempo, as dissonâncias causadas pela subordinação dos princípios éticos à lei estética do interesse e do prazer.
Abstract: Not informed.
Mestrado
Historia e Historiografia Literaria
Mestre em Teoria e História Literária
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Relf, Jan. "Rehearsing the future : utopia and dystopia in women's writing, 1960-1990." Thesis, University of Exeter, 1991. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.303370.
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Morton, Michelle E. "Utopian and dystopian visions of California in the historical imagination /." Diss., Digital Dissertations Database. Restricted to UC campuses, 2005. http://uclibs.org/PID/11984.
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Lee, Sung-Ae. "Utopias, dystopias, and abjection pathways for society's others in George Eliot's major fictions /." Phd thesis, Australia : Macquarie University, 2003. http://hdl.handle.net/1959.14/45363.
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Thesis (PhD)--Macquarie University, Division of Humanities, Department of English, 2003.Bibliography: p. 250-270.
Introduction -- Female subjectivity, abjection, and agency in Scenes of clerical life -- A questionable Utopia: Adam Bede -- Dystopia and the frustration of agency in the double Bildungsroman of The mill on the floss -- Abjection and exile in Silas Marner -- Justice and feminist Utopia in Romola -- Radicalism as Utopianism in Felix Holt, the radical -- The pursuit of what is good: Utopian impulses in Middlemarch -- Nationalism and multiculturalism: shaping the future as transformative Utopia in Daniel Deronda.
Within a framework based on Mikhail Bakhtin's dialogism and Julia Kristeva's theory of abjection, this thesis investigates how Utopian impulses are manifested in George Eliot's novels. Eliot's utopianism is presented first by a critique of dystopian elements in society and later by placing such elements in a dialogic relationship with utopian ideas articulated by leading characters. Each novel includes characters who are abjected because they have different ideas from the social norms, and such characters are silenced and expelled because society evaluates these differences in terms of its gender, class and racial prejudices. Dystopia is thus constituted as a resolution of the conflict between individual and society by the imposition of monologic values. Dialogic possibilities are explored by patterned character configurations and by the cultivation of ironical narrators' voices which enfold character focalization within strategic deployment of free indirect discourse. -- Eliot's early works, from Scenes of Clerical Life to Silas Marner, focus their dystopian elements as a critique of a monologic British society intolerant of multiple consciousnesses, and which consigns "other" voices to abjection and thereby precludes social progress by rejecting these "other" voices. In her later novels, from Romola to Daniel Deronda, Eliot presents concrete model utopian societies that foreshadow progressive changes to the depicted, existing society. Such an imagined society incorporates different consciousnesses and hence admits abject characters, who otherwise would have been regarded as merely transgressive, and thus silenced or eliminated. Abjected characters in Eliot's fiction tend also to be utopists, and hence have potential for positively transforming the world. Where they are depicted as gaining agency, they also in actuality or by implication bring about change in society, the nation and the wider world. -- An underlying assumption is that history can be changed for the better, so that utopian ideals can be actualized by means of human agency rather than by attributing teleological processes to supernatural forces. When a protagonist's utopian impulses fail, it is both because of dystopian elements of society and because of individual human weaknesses. In arguably her most utopian works, Romola and Daniel Deronda, Eliot creates ideal protagonists, one of whom remains in the domestic sphere because of gender, and another who is (albeit voluntarily) removed from British society because of his race/class. However, Romola can be seen as envisaging a basis for female advancement to public life, while Daniel Deronda suggests a new world order through a nationalism grounded in multiculturalism and a global utopianism.
Mode of access: World Wide Web.
v, 270 p
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Joo, Hee-Jung. "Speculative nations : racial utopia and dystopia in twentieth-century African American and Asian American literature /." view abstract or download file of text, 2007. http://proquest.umi.com/pqdweb?did=1404340651&sid=1&Fmt=2&clientId=11238&RQT=309&VName=PQD.
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Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Oregon, 2007.Typescript. Includes vita and abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 204-214). Also available for download via the World Wide Web; free to University of Oregon users.
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Oliveira, Priscilla Pellegrino de. "A Ordem e o caos: diferentes momentos da literatura distópica de ficção científica." Universidade do Estado do Rio de Janeiro, 2010. http://www.bdtd.uerj.br/tde_busca/arquivo.php?codArquivo=1822.
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Esta dissertação objetiva discutir a importância do momento histórico na construção da narrativa de um romance de ficção científica, tomando como base as obras Admirável mundo novo (1932), do escritor inglês Aldous Huxley, e O canal de execução (2007), do romancista escocês Ken MacLeod. A primeira obra descreve uma sociedade distópica em um futuro distante, que revela, porém, aspectos obviamente evidentes das décadas de 1920 e 1930. A segunda, tratando de um plausível futuro próximo da humanidade, apesar de apresentar uma alternativa à História do período entre os anos 2000 e 2007, refere-se claramente a preocupações presentes nas mentes do indivíduo pós-moderno. Os diferentes momentos em que se inserem as obras analisadas o período entreguerras e o início do século XXI, respectivamente permitem que sejam elaboradas considerações a partir de definições de utopia e distopia concebidas ao longo da história do pensamento utópico, principalmente através de perspectivas sociopolíticas relevantes para os períodos em questão, procurando destacar de que maneira a História se faz presente nas narrativas de Huxley e de MacLeod em telaThis dissertation aims at discussing the importance of the historical moment in the construction of the narrative of a Science Fiction novel, focusing on Brave New World (1932), by the English writer Aldous Huxley, and The Execution Channel (2007), by the Scottish novelist Ken MacLeod. The first one describes a dystopic society in a distant future, revealing, however, evident aspects of the 1920s and the 1930s. The second one, which is about a plausible near future for humankind, though presenting an alternative to the History of the period between 2000 and 2007, clearly refers to worries on the post-modern individuals mind. The different moments in which the analyzed novels are inserted the interwar period and the beginning of the twenty-first century, respectively allow us to make some considerations starting from definitions of utopia and dystopia conceived along the history of utopic thought, especially through sociopolitical perspectives which are relevant to the periods in question, attempting to emphasize how History is present in Huxleys and MacLeods narratives under consideration
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Clark, Edith Ilse Victoria. "Ursula K. Le Guin : the utopias and dystopias of The dispossessed and Always coming come." Thesis, University of British Columbia, 1987. http://hdl.handle.net/2429/26801.
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The thesis deals with the Utopian and dystopian aspects of Ursula K. Le Guin's The Dispossessed and Always Coming Home. To provide a basis for comparison with the endeavours of previous utopists, the first part is devoted to a historical account of literary Utopias, and to an examination of the signposts of the genre. This history is restricted to practical blueprints for the ideal commonwealth and excludes creations of pure fantasy.
In tracing Utopian development from Plato to Wells, the influence of historical events and the mainstreams of thought, such as Renaissance humanism, the Reformation, the rising importance of science, the discovery of new lands, the Enlightenment, Locke's Theory of Perfectability, Bentham's utilitarianism, the Industrial Revolution, socialism, the French Revolution, Darwinism, and the conflict between capital and labour is demonstrated. It is also shown how the long-range results of the Russian Revolution and the two world wars shattered all Utopian visions, leading to the emergence of the dystopia, and how the author reversed this negative trend in the second part of the twentieth century.
In a study of forms of Utopian presentation, the claim is made that The Dispossessed features the first Utopia that qualifies as a novel: not only does the author break with the genre's tradition of subordinating the characters to the proposal, she also creates the conflict necessary for novelistic structure by juxtaposing her positive societies with negative ones.
In part two, the Utopias and dystopias of both books are examined, and their features compared to previous endeavours in the genre. The observation is made that although the author favours anarchism as a political theory, she is more deeply committed to the Chinese philosophy of Taoism, seeing in its ideals the only way to a harmonious and just existence for all. In order to prove her point, Le Guin renders her Utopias less than perfect, placing one society into an inhospitable environment and showing the other as suffering from genetic damage; this suggests that the ideal life does not rest in societal organization or beneficent surroundings, but in the minds of the inhabitants: this frame of mind—if not inherent in a culture—can be achieved by living in accordance with the tao.
Lastly, an effort is made to determine the anthropological models upon which Utopian proposals are constructed. The theory is put forth that all non-governed, egalitarian Utopias represent a return to the societal arrangements of early man, when his communities were still small and decentralized, and before occupational specialization began to set in; that all democratic forms of government are taken from the Greek examples, that More's Utopia might well have been modelled on the Athenian clans of the pre-Cleisthenes era, and that the Kesh society of Always Coming Home is based exclusively on the kinship systems of the Pueblo Indians of the American Southwest.Arts, Faculty of
English, Department of
Graduate
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麥雅琳 and Ngah-lam Elaine Mak. "Eugenics in dystopian novels." Thesis, The University of Hong Kong (Pokfulam, Hong Kong), 2001. http://hub.hku.hk/bib/B31226516.
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Fancourt, Donna. "Altered states : feminist utopian literature." Thesis, University of Leicester, 2004. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.409809.
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This thesis interrogates the interaction between feminist utopianism and altered states of consciousness in fiction from 1970 onwards. The thesis develops further both Lyman Tower Sargent's definition of utopianism as "social dreaming" and Tom Moylan's understanding of critical utopia. It also develops and expands Lucy Sargisson's definition of feminist utopianism as subversive, fluid, ambiguous and committed to ongoing personal and social transformation. Utopianism must challenge society's norms and values, offering both social critique and social vision. I argue throughout this work that transforming individual consciousness is a vital step towards social change. The thesis focuses on four altered states of consciousness: madness, dreaming, spirituality and telepathy. These states are situated within a theoretical context, and are then explicated further through close literary analysis of feminist utopian literature. Altered states offer a metaphor for the need to think differently, and highlight the importance of looking at society in new and alternative ways. In a significant number of feminist utopian texts, utopia is accessed through a dream or a vision, through spiritual meditation, telepathy, or a state of "madness". Within these texts, altered states are not only used as a means of accessing utopia but are also represented within the narrative as a means of maintaining or sustaining the utopian vision. Additionally, I show that altered states refers to the place of utopia, which is altered, or different to, contemporary society. The reader may also enter into an altered state through the process of reading the text, as their beliefs and assumptions about "the way things are" are challenged, denaturalised and subverted.
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Hensley, Martin. "The Green World of Dystopian Fiction." TopSCHOLAR®, 2006. http://digitalcommons.wku.edu/theses/276.
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Northrop Frye was the first theorist to develop the green world archetype; Frye used the term to refer to a recurring motif in Shakespearean comedy. In several of Shakespeare's comedies, the protagonists leave the civilized world and venture into the green world, or nature, to escape from the irrational law of society, which is the case in such comedies as As You Like It and A Midsummer Night's Dream. Elements of the green world can also be found in Shakespearean tragedy, where the natural retreat serves as a temporary escape for the protagonists. Such a green world exists in three of the most well known examples of dystopian fiction: George Orwell's 1984, Aldous Huxley's Brave New World, and Yevgeny Zamyatin's We. In these three novels, the protagonists take flight from the repressive dystopia and journey into nature. In the green world, the protagonists attain individual freedom and identity and experience emotions, passions, beauty, the past, and the power of language. Each of these elements, which are associated with the green world, stand in opposition to the dystopian society's doctrine. The green world, then, becomes an escape, a place where the protagonists can temporarily live a free life away from the tyrannical powers of the dystopic society. The dystopian green world experience follows a pattern of flight, immersion, and departure. In the first segment, the protagonists flee from the oppressive society and into nature; in the second, they immerse themselves within the green world where they experience new sensations, emotions, and gain new insights and understanding; in the third, the protagonists depart the green world and return to the civilized world in order to confront it with the knowledge they have gained while immersed in the green world. This pattern can also be viewed as a symbolic cycle that moves from death to rebirth to death. The first death is the death-like stasis of the dystopia and of the protagonist, who is just a part of the whole and not truly an individual. The symbolic rebirth conies when the protagonists depart the green world as individuals with new know ledge and experiences. Lastly, the second symbolic, or sometimes literal death, comes when the protagonists confront the dystopia with their new knowledge, have that knowledge challenged by an agent of the dystopia, usually in the form of a trial, and, finally, are symbolically or literally destroyed by the dystopian agent.
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Weiss, Katherine. "Beckett’s Ruined Landscapes: Dystopian Visions after WWII." Digital Commons @ East Tennessee State University, 2016. https://dc.etsu.edu/etsu-works/2252.
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Mak, Ngah-lam Elaine. "Eugenics in dystopian novels /." Hong Kong : University of Hong Kong, 2001. http://sunzi.lib.hku.hk/hkuto/record.jsp?B23595954.
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Lincow, Jamie Agins. "La distopia en las novelas de Ana Maria Shua." Diss., Temple University Libraries, 2010. http://cdm16002.contentdm.oclc.org/cdm/ref/collection/p245801coll10/id/75557.
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SpanishPh.D.
This dissertation focuses on the influence of political and social history in the novels of Ana María Shua, an Argentine author who critiques her own contemporary society based upon her nation’s history and her Jewish ancestry. It examines the relationships between individuals, such as parents and children, spouses, or friends to demonstrate that people are unable to change their own situation: the circularity of time and the repetition of the past will always haunt the inhabitants and marginalize them. This work analyzes Shua’s five novels: Soy paciente (1980), Los amores de Laurita (1984), El libro de los recuerdos (1994), La muerte como efecto secundario (1997), and El peso de la tentación (2007). These selected works explore the transformations of the protagonists through their interactions with their environment in order to prove that the individual will remain isolated within the hierarchies and institutions created by contemporary society. The introduction offers an overview of Shua’s biography and literary works as well as an exploration of the connections between the history of Argentina and the author’s novels. Chapter 1 focuses on the influence of history in the present and future of the protagonists in Los amores de Laurita, El libro de los recuerdos, and La muerte como efecto secundario. Chapter 2 makes use of Michel Foucault’s system of power to explore the way in which society victimizes the protagonists. The chapter studies: Los amores de Laurita, La muerte como efecto secundario, and El peso de la tentación. Chapter 3 analyzes the hierarchies established in the institutions and how they convert the body of the individual into a jail. The novels studied include: Soy paciente, La muerte como efecto secundario, and El peso de la tentación. Chapter 4 demonstrates how the history of Argentina is represented in the political and social institutions of El libro de los recuerdos, Soy paciente, and El peso de la tentación. It connects the contemporary desire of a utopian future with Jewish tradition and the hope of a messiah. The conclusions recapitulate the pessimistic, dystopian future that remains for each of the protagonists.
Temple University--Theses
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Taylor, Sharon C. "Dystopies et eutopies féminines : L. Bersianik, E. Vonarburg, E. Rochon." Thesis, McGill University, 2002. http://digitool.Library.McGill.CA:80/R/?func=dbin-jump-full&object_id=84201.
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Five "critical" utopias by Quebec women writers ( L'Euguelionne and Le pique-nique sur l'Acropole by Louky Bersianik; Le silence de la Cite and Chroniques du Pays des Meres by Elisabeth Vonarburg and L'Espace du diamant by Esther Rochon) make up the corpus of this thesis which aims to explore how the three novelists exploit the possibilities of this particular form of contemporary utopian writing. For these authors, the transformation of society depends upon the transformation of the individual. We therefore propose to examine the ways in which Bersianik, Vonarburg and Rochon represent, through the experiences of their characters, the social construction of individual identity. For our corpus, this entails a study both of the representations of gender and of the role of language in the construction of identity. We explore gender from a feminist perspective by examining the initial dystopian situation of the individual living in society; we then analyze the positive (i.e. eutopian) process of change undergone by the individual.This thesis begins by exploring a definition of literary utopia. We then trace the major periods in the history of literary utopia to provide background for our corpus. In chapter two, we examine the ways in which Bersianik, Vonarburg and Rochon denounce, through their fictional representations of the individual, dystopian configurations of gender. In particular, we study various "structural" metaphors used by the authors to interrogate the social role of women and the status of the female body in patriarchal society. In chapter three, we examine the new configurations of social and sexual identity proposed by the authors. We then study the author's treatment of the role of language in the social construction of individual identity in chapter four. After defining "sociolect" and introducing "sexualect", we apply these concepts to the study of the critique of sexist language and discourses of authority in our corpus. In chapter five, we explore how the authors employ discursive strategies, such as parody and "defamiliarization", to alter language and thus inscribe female subjectivity in language (Bersianik and Vonarburg) and to liberate individuals from the imprisonment of authoritarian discourses (Bersianik, Vonarburg and Rochon). Lastly, we find that after having examined the human condition in dystopian societies, our authors propose social projects that are infinitely dynamic and mutable rather than fixed models of an ideal social state.
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Evans, Peter William Robert. "British and American socialist utopian literature, 1888-1900." Thesis, University of Bristol, 2014. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.681497.
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This dissertation studies socialist utopian literature published in Britain and America from 1888-1900. The central thesis is that they shared an underlying theoretical basis regarding how they were imagined to function, and why. Details obviously varied, but these texts shared a common structure which can be defined in terms of five interrelated themes: economics; ethics; environment; education; and evolution. These socialist utopias embodied a certain set of relations between these themes. Planned cooperative economies would be founded upon a socialist ethic inculcated by education and the environment, and the whole was posited as the product of historical evolution. These interrelated aspects were seen as the necessary foundations that would enable a socialist utopia - a united, harmonious society, characterised by association, community, and cooperation. This would convert society into a "community of interests", and an "administration of things", enabling collective democratic control of a socialist economy. This pattern can be found across the literature, underlying various strands of contemporary socialism and internal splits dividing the ideology. The most prominent of these, as manifested in utopian literature, was between state socialism and communitarian or libertarian socialist approaches. This divide is best encapsulated in the two most-famous examples, represented by Edward Bellamy's Looking Backward and William Morris' News from Nowhere respectively, which dominate existing secondary accounts. However, the differences between these two strands were not as great as often supposed. These complex issues have been approached through the prism of the key figure of Bellamy, and five of his respondents who are essentially unstudied. This is both because of the size of the literature (around 50 texts), but also Bellamy's overwhelming significance in existing secondary accounts, and to his contemporaries. Morris however is considered mainly as a touching-point in relation to other texts, there being little to add to existing accounts.
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Hall, G. M. "The utopian form of D.H. Lawrence's major fiction." Thesis, University of Sussex, 1986. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.375171.
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Oliveira, Chiara Sofia Alessandrini de. "O quadro utópico n' "A cidade do sol" de Sarmento de Beires e na "Irmânia" de Ângelo Jorge." Master's thesis, Universidade de Évora, 2019. http://hdl.handle.net/10174/27764.
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Dois casos ainda pouco estudados tanto a nível de análise literária como
inseridos no género Utópico são o romance Irmânia escrito por Ângelo Jorge e
A Cidade do Sol redigido por Sarmento de Beires. Ângelo Jorge trabalha o
romance de uma forma universal, trabalhando o ser humano como um
indivíduo em potência, capaz de se adaptar e de se aperfeiçoar. A sua utopia é
uma utopia clássica.
No romance de Sarmento de Beires a dinâmica narratológica abrange
três planos distintos, todos eles cristalizados pela mente e pelo espiritual: o
real, o irreal e, por último, o limiar entre os dois planos, locus onde se passa
toda a acção.
A dimensão espiritual e de ascensão pela mente também é trabalhada
tanto pelo místico Boaventura assim como por Agostinho da Silva. A perfeição,
em ambos os autores, surge e dá-se na mente. A utopia nestes dois últimos
autores é trabalhada como um conceito filosófico e místico; The Utopia Context in “A Cidade do Sol” by Sarmento de Beires and in “Irmânia” by
Ângelo Jorge ABSTRACT:
Two cases that has been insufficiently researched as in a literary
analysis as inserted in an Utopian context are the novel Irmânia written by
Ângelo Jorge and A Cidade do Sol written by Sarmento de Beires. Ângelo
Jorge works the novel in a Universal way, the human being as an individual
potency, capable of improvement and adaptation, the description of this Utopia
is made in a classic way.
In Sarmento de Beires novel the dynamic of the narration is done in three
different plans, all of them are cristallized by the Mind and the Spiritual: the real,
unreal and, the last, the threshold between the two plans, locus where all the
action is spen The spiritual dimension and ascension through the mind is also worked
by both mystic Boaventura and Agostinho da Silva. The perfection, in boths
authors arise and is give in the mind. The utopia in these last authors is worked
as a philosophical and mystical concept.
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Uhlenbruch, Frauke. "The Nowhere Bible : the Biblical passage Numbers 13 as a case study of Utopian and Dystopian readings by diachronic audiences." Thesis, University of Derby, 2014. http://hdl.handle.net/10545/315827.
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Applying utopian theory to the Bible reveals a number of issues surrounding the biblical text within academic disciplines such as biblical studies, which study the Bible as an ancient cultural artefact, and among religious readers of the Bible. The biblical passage Numbers 13 was chosen as a case study of a utopian reading of the image of the Promised Land to demonstrate the Bible’s multifaceted potential by externalising the presupposition brought to the text. The underlying method is derived from an ideal type procedure, appropriated from Weber. Instead of comparing phenomena to each other, one compares a phenomenon to a constructed ideal type. This method enables one to compare phenomena independently of exclusive definitions and direct linear influences. It has been suggested by biblical scholars that utopian readings of the Bible can yield insights into socio-political circumstances in the society which produced biblical texts. Using observations by Holquist about utopias’ relationships to reality it is asked if applying the concept of utopia to a biblical passage allows drawing conclusions about the originating society of the Hebrew Bible. The answer is negative. Theory about literary utopias is applied to the case study passage. Numbers 13 is similar to literary utopias in juxtaposing a significantly improved society with a home society, the motif of travellers in an unfamiliar environment, and the feature of a map which is graphically not representable. Noth’s reading of the biblical passage’s toponyms reveals that its map is a utopian map. Numbers 13 is best understood as a literary utopia describing an unrealistic environment and using common utopian techniques and motifs. Despite describing an unrealistic environment, the passage was understood as directly relevant to reality by readers throughout time, for example by Bradford. Following two Puritan readings, it is observed that biblical utopian texts have the potential of being applied in reality by those who see them as a call to action. If a literary utopia is attempted to be brought into reality, it becomes apparent that it marginalises those who are not utopian protagonists; in the case study passage, the non-Israelite tribes, in Bradford’s reading, the Native Nations in New England. The interplay of utopia and dystopia is explored and it is concluded that a definitive trait of literary utopias is their potential to turn into an experienced dystopia if enforced literally. This argument is supported by demonstrating that the utopian traits of the case study passage contain dystopian downsides if read from a different perspective. A contemporary utopian reading of the case study passage is proposed. Today utopian speculation most often appears in works of science fiction (SF). Motifs appearing in the case study passage are read as tropes familiar to a contemporary Bible reader from SF. Following D. Suvin’s SF theory, it is concluded that the Bible in the contemporary world can be understood as a piece of SF. It contains the juxtaposition of an estranged world with a reader’s experienced world as well as a potential utopian and dystopian message.
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Weir, Susan Leigh. "Lettres d'une Peruvienne: An Enlightenment Utopian Novel." PDXScholar, 1995. https://pdxscholar.library.pdx.edu/open_access_etds/4912.
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This thesis examines Franc;oise de Graffigny's eighteenthcentury novel, Lettres d'une Peruvienne. focusing on the aspects that demonstrate its consideration as a utopian work, or moreover, as a feminist utopian work. The first chapter is developed from the premise about utopian fiction that the author's life must be considered since it is out of his or her "lived social experience" that utopian visions are born. Utopias, many have argued, are born out of reactions to social inequities and injustices. This chapter thus presents and analyzes, Graffigny's life especially where it shows needs for a future utopia. The second chapter explores definitions of utopias, especially feminist literary utopias, in order to build a framework for analyzing Graffigny's work. It will be shown that this novel exhibits many of the traits found in a woman's utopia as opposed to those found in a man's. The third and fourth chapters directly analyze the text, Lettres d'une Peruvienne, using the research from the previous chapters as the groundwork to draw out the utopian aspects of the novel.
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Pohl, Nicole Barbara. "Gender and utopian space in women's literature, 1660-1789." Thesis, Birkbeck (University of London), 1998. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.286365.
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Hall, Alexander Charles Oliver. "Reel Hope: Literature and the Utopian Function of Adaptation." Kent State University / OhioLINK, 2013. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=kent1372450824.
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Calzavara, Fiammetta <1980>. "The arts in utopian literature : their functions and forms." Doctoral thesis, Università Ca' Foscari Venezia, 2012. http://hdl.handle.net/10579/1158.
Full textAbstract:
Questa tesi studia il rapporto che intercorre tra le arti e il genere letterario dell’utopia. La domanda principale alla quale ho cercato di rispondere riguarda la natura delle arti in utopia. Quali sono le arti presenti in utopia? Quali funzioni svolgono le arti? Quali le finalità? E soprattutto, il mondo utopico è un mondo estetico? Quale ruolo svolgono le arti in una società efficiente, razionale, dedita all’uguaglianza? Per rispondere a queste e altre domande ho analizzato un corpus di opere utopiche che va dal 1516 al 1980. Da Tommaso Moro a Doris Lessing, passando per C.B. Brown, Edward Bellamy, William Morris, C.P. Gilman, B.F. Skinner, Ursula K. Le Guin, Joanna Russ, Marge Piercy e Ernest Callenbach. Nonostante esistano significanti eccezioni, lungi da occupare un posto marginale, le arti sono parte integrante del progetto utopico influenzandolo ed essendone a loro volta influenzate. L’arte e l’estetica in utopia abbandonano le mura private della casa per impossessarsi delle strade, degli edifici pubblici, delle città, e contribuiscono a ridefinire ed ampliare il concetto di arte, poiché la bellezza accompagna ogni momento dell’esperienza utopica.This thesis studies the existing relationship between the arts and utopian literature. The main question I tried to answer deals with the nature of the arts in utopia. What are the arts involved in the rendering of the aesthetic project? What are their functions? Is the utopian society an aesthetic society? What is the role of the arts within an efficient and rational society that is by its very nature committed to equality? To answer these and other questions I considered a corpus of utopian works that dates from 1516 to 1980. From Thomas More to Doris Lessing, passing through C.B. Brown, Edward Bellamy, William Morris, C.P. Gilman, B.F. Skinner, Ursula K. Le Guin, Joanna Russ, Marge Piercy and Ernest Callenbach. Apart from significant exceptions, far from occupying a minor space, the arts actively contribute to the creation of the utopian project. I suggest that the arts by leaving the private space of the house and moving towards the public sphere - in the streets as well as in public buildings - where everybody can benefit from their view, contribute to a new and wider definition of the word art as beauty in utopia is preserved in every aspect of human life.
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Marroquin, Melissa. "The New Dystopian Trend: Neoliberalism and the YA text." Scholarship @ Claremont, 2017. http://scholarship.claremont.edu/cmc_theses/1624.
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Since the success of J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series, the young adult text has functioned as a potential gold mine both in publishing and in commercial film. Within the YA realm, a trend has surfaced which features a formulaic narrative located within a dystopian society. This research closely analyzes two popular works of the YA dystopian boom, The Hunger Games and the Divergent series, in order to outline the vast appeal of such a trend. Once examined, it becomes evident that the trend is one consistently tied to neoliberal ideals of individual achievement.
Using neoliberalism as a lens of investigation, broader connections to youth culture within the contemporary cultural landscape are revealed. Investigating two mainstream favorites of the young adult dystopia has uncovered the notion of individualism that feeds the logic of consumer capitalism. Exploring a range of topics from the role of romance to government intervention, this work highlights the ways in which the trend reinforces the importance of the individual and her freedoms.
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Dinatale, Leah Flynn Richard. "Cultural power and utopianism in Laurie Halse Anderson's Prom and M.T. Anderson's Feed." Diss., Statesboro, Ga.: Georgia Southern University, 2009. http://www.georgiasouthern.edu/etd/archive/fall2009/leah_c_dinatale/DiNatale_Leah_C_200908_MA.pdf.
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"A thesis submitted to the Graduate Faculty of Georgia Southern University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree Master of Arts." Title from PDF of title page (Georgia Southern University, viewed on May 1, 2010). Richard Flynn, major professor; Caren Town, Joe Pellegrino, committee members. Electronic version approved: December 2009. Includes bibliographical references (p. 62-66).
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Cartwright, Amy. "The future is Gothic : elements of Gothic in dystopian novels." Thesis, University of Glasgow, 2005. http://theses.gla.ac.uk/1346/.
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This thesis explores the relationship between the Gothic tradition and Dystopian novels in order to illuminate new perspective on the body in Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s Herland (1915), Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World (1932), George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949), Anthony Burgess’ A Clockwork Orange (1962), Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale (1985) and Michel Houellebecq’s Atomised (1999). The key concerns are those of the Labyrinth, Dark Places, Connectedness and the Loss of the Individual, Live Burials, Monsters and Fragmented Flesh. A thematic approach allows for the novels to be brought together under common Gothic themes in order to show not only that they have such tendencies, but that they share common ground as Gothic Dystopias. While the focus is on bodily concerns in these novels, it is also pertinent to offer a discussion of past critical perspectives on the Dystopia and this is undertaken in Chapter One. Chapter Two looks at the narrative structure of the novels and finds similarities in presentation to Gothic novels, which leads to exploration of the position of the body in such a narrative of the unseen. The third chapter looks to the spaces inhabited by characters in the novels to examine their impact on the threat faced by these individuals. The Gothic convention of doubling is the focus of Chapter Four, which finds not only doubling operating in Dystopian novels, but the more complex relationship of triangles of doubling holding characters, fixing them in relation to those around at the expense of selfhood. Chapter Five takes Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick’s musings on the Gothic as its point of departure and finds that Dystopian bodies occupy a very similarly trapped position. Chapter Six identifies two types of monsters that inhabit the Gothic Dystopian space: those people who transform between the human and the monstrous, and those individuals who form a larger monster based on power that lives parasitically on transgressive bodies. The final chapter displays the impact of the Gothic Dystopia on individual bodies: ‘Fragmented Flesh’. The destruction of a coherent whole, a body with defined and sustainable boundaries, is the outcome of the novels where fear, repression, and the hidden combine to leave little space for cohesion and identification in the Gothic Dystopia.
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Tan, Susan. "Between times : growing into future's history in young adult dystopian literature." Thesis, University of Cambridge, 2015. https://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.708554.
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NEWMAN, CHINA RAE. "GENDER PERFORMANCE IN DYSTOPIAN LITERATURE THROUGHOUT THE HISTORY OF SCIENCE FICTION." Thesis, The University of Arizona, 2016. http://hdl.handle.net/10150/613347.
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This work analyzes the use and portrayal of gender in Jack London’s The Iron Heel (1908), George Orwell’s 1984 (1949), Philip K. Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep (1968), and Stephanie Collins’ The Hunger Games (2008), four dystopian works written over a period of 100 years. It questions the reasoning behind the use of gender within each of the texts and looks at the changes in the use and presentation of gendered characters in each of the novels, considering the purpose of each text and the possible reasoning behind gendered portrayals of the characters in each story. Though a chronological analysis of these texts reveals a change from the portrayal of femininity as a singular good to a mindless weakness to a necessary balancing force, feminine characters remain subordinate to and weaker than masculine characters, even as a female protagonist takes the stage in the final novel. Finally, the work questions whether the conventions of the dystopian genre preclude the existence of a feminine dystopian hero or if the reason she has not yet been written is based on a cultural bias towards strong masculinity in main characters of any gender rather than the norms of the dystopian genre.
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Forde, Christine M. "Ideologies of gender in contemporary feminist utopian writing 1969-1998." Thesis, University of Strathclyde, 1999. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.366741.
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Williamson, Sara. "Halting but intimate confidences : sexuality and romance in utopian literature." Honors in the Major Thesis, University of Central Florida, 2010. http://digital.library.ucf.edu/cdm/ref/collection/ETH/id/1524.
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This item is only available in print in the UCF Libraries. If this is your Honors Thesis, you can help us make it available online for use by researchers around the world by following the instructions on the distribution consent form at http://library.ucf.edu/Systems/DigitalInitiatives/DigitalCollections/InternetDistributionConsentAgreementForm.pdf You may also contact the project coordinator, Kerri Bottorff, at kerri.bottorff@ucf.edu for more information.Bachelors
Arts and Humanities
English
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Farrar, Ryan D. ""A Better Where to Find"| Utopian Politics in Shakespeare's Plays." Thesis, University of Louisiana at Lafayette, 2015. http://pqdtopen.proquest.com/#viewpdf?dispub=3687677.
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Utopias often elicit visions of full-fledged societies that operate more successfully in contrast to a society of the present based on a principle of cognitive estrangement where the daily routines of a new civilization strike readers as strange and advantageous. While William Shakespeare's drama rarely portrays radical societies that speak directly to the fantastic nature of utopia, it does feature moments that draw attention to desires for social change, presenting glimmers of the utopian impulse throughout his work. In this dissertation, I use utopia as critical approach for analyzing Shakespeare's comedies, romances, and tragedies, specifically As You Like It, The Tempest, The Taming of the Shrew, Twelfth Night, Romeo and Juliet, Hamlet, and Macbeth. While critics have approached the The Tempest as a utopian play, other works by Shakespeare do not receive much attention from this perspective. This dissertation addresses the lack of attention paid to other plays, illustrating the degree to which the health of the state as a theme featured prominently in his works. I argue that the desires expressed by characters in these plays capture the wishes and despairs of entire social ranks during the Elizabethan and Jacobean, connecting their wishes and fantasies to utopian and dystopian analysis. As You Like It and The Tempest feature utopic settings and address themes of colonialism and egalitarianism. Yet, rather than present locations of harmony, these plays explore the problems and contradictions that spring from the attempts to actualize a utopian climate. Characters in The Taming of the Shrew, Twelfth Night, and Romeo and Juliet possess radical aspirations, and they discover opportunities to transform their identities as it relates to their respective societies. However, these characters ultimately fail to rupture the ideologies of their societies. In my final chapter, I argue how dystopian themes arise from the depictions of tyranny and treachery in Hamlet and Macbeth. The transgressions of the Kings in both plays plague their kingdoms. Tackling Shakespeare from a utopian lens illustrates that rather than forming alternative, ideal societies, the concept can be understood as an ambiguous, unfinished dialectical process that strives for social betterment.
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Cojocaru, Daniel. "Violence and dystopia : mimesis and sacrifice in contemporary Western dystopian narratives." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2011. http://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:f3f2848d-d349-4dcd-8bff-810010a2e8e3.
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Violence and Dystopia is a critical examination of imitative desire, scapegoating and sacrifice in selected contemporary Western dystopian narratives through the lens of René Girard’s mimetic theory. The first chapter offers an overview of the history of Western utopia/dystopia with a special emphasis on the problem of conflictive mimesis and scapegoating violence, and a critical introduction to Girard’s theory. The second chapter is devoted to J.G. Ballard’s seminal novel Crash (1973). It is argued that the car crash functions as a metaphor for conflictive mimetic desire and leads to a quasi-sacrificial crisis as defined by Girard for archaic religion. The attempt of the medieval propheta-figure to resolve the crisis through violence fails and leads to potential violence without end. The third chapter focuses on the psychogeographical writings of Iain Sinclair. Walking the streets of London he represents the excluded underside of the world of Ballardian speed. The walking subject is portrayed in terms of the expelled victim of Girardian theory. The fourth chapter considers violent crowds as portrayed by Ballard’s late fiction, the writings of Stewart Home and David Peace’s GB84 (2004). In accordance with Girard’s hypothesis, the discussed narratives reveal the failure of scapegoat expulsion to restore peace to the potentially self-destructive violent crowds. The fifth chapter examines the post-apocalyptic environments resulting from failed scapegoat expulsion and mimetic conflict out of control, as portrayed in Sinclair’s Radon Daughters (1994), Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale (1985) and Oryx and Crake (2003) and Will Self’s The Book of Dave (2006). In conclusion it will become evident that Girard’s theory forms an indispensable analytical tool uncovering the pivotal themes of imitation and scapegoating in the discussed narratives: themes largely ignored in current scholarship on dystopia and secondary literature on the focussed authors.
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Tan, Ai-Choo Zhi-Hui. "Daoxuan's vision of Jetavana: Imagining a utopian monastery in early Tang." Diss., The University of Arizona, 2002. http://hdl.handle.net/10150/280212.
Full textAbstract:
This study provides the first complete translation into a Western language of a fairly unknown but yet important Chinese work, titled the Zhong tianzhu shewei guo qiyuan si tujing (Illustrated Scripture of Jetavana Monastery in the Sravasti Kingdom in Central India), which describes Jetavana Monastery through textual and diagrammatic representations. To understand better the background of the text, I first discussed the life and times of its author Daoxuan (596-667 C.E.), an important figure in the history of Chinese Buddhism particularly in relation to the formation of Chinese Buddhist monasticism. I also explored the scriptural and historical records which might have served as sources for Daoxuan's own portrayal for the history and myth of the Jetavana Monastery. Finally, I offered a synoptic analysis of the text itself. The significance of Daoxuan's representation of Jetavana lies precisely in its function as a blueprint of a utopian Buddhist monastery for the early Tang Buddhists rather than as a faithful reconstruction of the historical site in India. The spatial complex and architectural design of the monastery visibly appropriates the symmetrical structure of the Chang'an City. The monastic compound is spatially organized into specialized cloisters and halls for the Buddha, the various ranks of Buddhist saints, the immortals and heavenly beings, the different commoners and laity who are visiting or living in the monastery. The text interfuses fact and fantasy, historical reality and religious vision; its description of extraordinary artifacts, divine creatures, and plants certainly mirror the Buddhist paradisal representations in texts and art. It is equally important to realize that such imagery is also derived in part from the exotic products, cultural curiosities, fantastical creatures imported from foreign lands that pervaded the markets of the cosmopolitan Chang'an in the Tang. Further investigation in my study of Daoxuan's portrayal of Jetavana suggests that the influence of this text is not only found in the Chinese monastic setting and Dunhuang cave art in the later periods, but its impact is also visible in Japanese Buddhism.