Hundred Days' Literature: Chinese Utopian Fiction at the End of Empire, 1902–1910

‘No person can be blamed for refusing to read another word of what promises to be a mere imposition upon his credulity.’ Julian West, a feckless aristocrat living in fin-de-siècle Boston, plunges into a deep hypnotic sleep in 1887 and wakes up in the year 2000. America has been turned into a rigorously centralized democratic society in which everything is controlled by a humane and efficient state. In little more than a hundred years the horrors of nineteenth-century capitalism have been all but forgotten. The squalid slums of Boston have been replaced by broad streets, and technological inventions have transformed people’s everyday lives. Exiled from the past, West excitedly settles into the ideal society of the future, while still fearing that he has dreamt up his experiences as a time traveller. Edward Bellamy’s Looking Backward (1888) is a thunderous indictment of industrial capitalism and a resplendent vision of life in a socialist utopia. Matthew Beaumont’s lively edition explores the political and psychological peculiarities of this celebrated utopian fiction.

Download Full-text

Pilgrims Through Time and Space; Trends and Patterns in Scientific and Utopian Fiction. James Osler BaileyA Bibliography of the Works of Sir Henry Rider Haggard, 1856-1925. J. E. ScottCarrousel for Bibliophiles; a Treasury of Tales, Narratives, Songs, Epigrams and Sundry Curious Studies Relating to a Noble Theme. William Targ

The Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America ◽

10.1086/pbsa.41.4.24298437 ◽

1947 ◽

Vol 41 (4) ◽

pp. 358-361

Author(s):

Earle F. Walbridge

Keyword(s):

Time And Space ◽

Utopian Fiction

Download Full-text

Alberto Blest Gana: Four Chronicles and a Novel

Open Cultural Studies ◽

10.1515/culture-2021-0009 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 5 (1) ◽

pp. 123-135

Author(s):

Laura Janina Hosiasson

Keyword(s):

Utopian Fiction ◽

Alberto Blest Gana ◽

Close Relationship ◽

The Face ◽

The Government ◽

The Relationship ◽

Shed Light

Abstract Four chronicles written by Alberto Blest Gana between April and May 1862 in the newspaper La voz de Chile, months before the publication of his novel Mariluán, shed light on the close relationship between his production as chronicler and writer. Among the various faits divers discussed in the columns, the issue of a Mapuche delegation’s arrival in Santiago to hold a parlamento with the government about border disputes arises. The oscillating attitude of the chronicler in the face of otherness and his prejudiced comments, which are at the same time full of doubts and perplexities, serve as an incentive for his composing a utopian fiction. This article aims to examine the connections in the relationship between Blest Gana chronicler and novelist to expand the reading possibilities of Mariluán.

Download Full-text

Henry Neville’s The Isle of Pines and the Emergence of Racial and Colonial Discourses in the Genre of Utopia in Britain

International Letters of Social and Humanistic Sciences ◽

10.18052/www.scipress.com/ilshs.35.33 ◽

2014 ◽

Vol 35 ◽

pp. 33-44

Author(s):

Zahra Jannessari Ladani

Keyword(s):

Political Philosophy ◽

Seventeenth Century ◽

Turbulent Atmosphere ◽

Utopian Fiction ◽

The Republic ◽

Controversial Nature

This essay will explicate and study Henry Neville's The Isle of Pines as one of the most popular utopian/dystopian accounts written in the pamphleteering tradition current in the seventeenth century. The researcher will see how Neville's socio-political philosophy was molded in the highly turbulent atmosphere of the seventeenth century. Then, The Isle of Pines will closely be analyzed to assess its formation under the influence of the controversial nature of the politics of the time. We will also elaborate on Neville's introduction of the pamphleteering tradition to utopian fiction. In addition, Neville's employment and foregrounding of racial and colonial intentions will be discussed to see how these modern discourses gave shape and directed the genre of British utopia as an apology for the republic and commonwealth as the requirement of an age with a disturbed political face.

Download Full-text

“Endowment of Motherhood”: Gilman’s Utopian Fiction

Breeding and Eugenics in the American Literary Imagination ◽

10.1057/9781137545794_6 ◽

2015 ◽

pp. 127-156

Author(s):

Ewa Barbara Luczak

Keyword(s):

Utopian Fiction

Download Full-text

Envisioning Empire in Bacon, Hooke, and Cavendish

The Curious Eye ◽

10.1093/oso/9780198850199.003.0004 ◽

2020 ◽

pp. 74-102

Author(s):

Erin Webster

Keyword(s):

Human Nature ◽

New World ◽

Utopian Fiction ◽

New Atlantis

This chapter examines Francis Bacon’s fictional ‘new world’ discovery narrative, The New Atlantis (1626), and its influence on Robert Hooke’s Micrographia (1665) and Margaret Cavendish’s Blazing World (1666). It begins by showing how Bacon’s dream of a visually rooted imperial empiricism gives shape to Hooke’s observations, both physical and textual, of the ‘new world’ revealed to him by the technology of the microscope. It then turns to Cavendish’s utopian fiction as another new world narrative in this tradition and argues that in this work Cavendish directly responds to the visually charged imperialistic empiricism of The New Atlantis and Micrographia. Where Bacon and Hooke posit optically enhanced vision as a means through which particular humans could both discover and ‘improve’ nature to meet their own ends, The Blazing World, in keeping with Cavendish’s own vitalist philosophy, celebrates the knowledge of non-human animals and holds out intersubjectivity in place of objectivity as the most fruitful means of engaging both human and non-human nature.

Download Full-text