UTOPIA AND ITS DISCONTENTS plato to atwood;plato to atwood

__Utopia and Its Discontents__ traces literary representations of ideal communities from Plato to the 21st century. Each chapter offers close readings of key utopian and anti-utopian texts to demonstrate how they construct, challenge and explore the ideas and forms of earlier utopian writings and the social and political ideals of their own periods. In this original and insightful study, Sebastian Mitchell demonstrates how literary utopias are often as much about the past as they are about the present and the future. __Utopia and Its Discontents__ concludes by arguing against the idea that the utopian has been eclipsed by the dystopian in contemporary culture. Topics covered include: - Early political and philosophical authors, such as Plato and Thomas More - Literary works, from Jonathan Swift's __Gulliver's Travels__ to George Orwell's __Nineteen Eighty-Four__ - Speculative-fiction writers such as H.G. Wells, Aldous Huxley and Margaret Atwood - Ecological and feminist texts by Ernest Callenbach, Ursula Le Guin and Marge Piercy - Twenty-first century utopianism This is an essential study for scholars and students of utopian literature. Utopia and its Discontents" traces literary representations of ideal communities from Plato to the 21st century. Each chapter offers close readings of key utopian and anti-utopian texts to demonstrate how they construct, challenge and explore the ideas and forms of earlier utopian writings and the social and political ideals of their own periods. The book explores how literary utopias are often as much about the past as they are about the present and the future. Utopia and Its Discontents covers such topics as: - Early political and philosophical writers, such as Aristotle and Thomas More - Literary works, from Voltaire's Candide to George Orwell's 1984 - Science fiction writers such as H.G. Wells, Aldous Huxley and Brian Aldiss - Ecological and feminist texts by Ursula Le Guin and Margaret Atwood - Utopian cinema, from Fritz Lang's Metropolis to Ridley Scott's Blade Runner With annotated chapter-by-chapter guides to further reading, this is an essential study for students and scholars of utopian literature Cover page 1 Halftitle page 2 Title page 4 Copyright page 5 Dedication 6 Contents 8 Illustrations 9 Acknowledgements 10 Introduction 12 1 Plato versus Plato: Art and Idealism 22 2 Oxymorus: Thomas More and Utopia 48 3 Hippophilia: Swift, Kant, and Eighteenth-Century Utopia 74 4 The Machine Age: Carlyle to Morris 104 5 English Triptych: Wells, Huxley, Orwell 134 6 Post-Utopia: America in the 1970s 168 7 Atwood’s Scar; or, the Origins of Ustopia 196 Conclusion: The Utopian Prospect 228 Bibliography 240 Index 256