Utopian spaces of modernism : British literature and culture, 1885-1945

This volume undertakes a fundamental reassessment of utopianism during the modernist period. It charts the rich spectrum of literary utopian projects between 1885 and 1945, and reconstructs their cultural work by locating them in the material 'spaces' in which they originated. The book brings together work by leading academics and younger scholars. This volume undertakes a reassessment of the role of utopianism in modernist literature. It charts the rich spectrum of literary utopian projects between 1885 and 1945, and reconstructs their cultural work by locating them in the material 'spaces' in which they originated. The book features contributions by leading academics, as well as innovative work by younger scholars. The collection calls into question the condemnation of utopianism -- especially its identification with totalitarian rule -- which became popular in the second half of the twentieth century. Contributions explore the utopian visions of major writers like Joseph Conrad, E.M. Forster, Virginia Woolf, and James Joyce and place their works in dialogue with neglected figures such as Charles Howard Hinton, the New Age occultists, and Edwardian authors of prophecy fiction Front Matter....Pages i-x Introduction....Pages 1-15 Front Matter....Pages 17-17 Socially Empty Space and Dystopian Utopianism in the Late Nineteenth Century....Pages 19-34 ‘On the Eve of the Fourth Dimension’: Utopian Higher Space....Pages 35-51 Modernism’s Material Futures: Glass, and Several Kinds of Plastic....Pages 52-70 Minor Utopias and the British Literary Temperament, 1880–1945....Pages 71-84 Front Matter....Pages 85-85 Utopian Bloomsbury: The Grounds for Social Dreaming in William Morris’ News from Nowhere....Pages 87-104 Utopia from the Rooftops: H.G. Wells, Modernism and the Panorama-City....Pages 105-120 ‘The Strange High Singing of Some Aeroplane Overhead’: War, Utopia and the Everyday in Virginia Woolf’s Fiction....Pages 121-140 ‘Hellhole and Paradise’: The Heterotopic Spaces of Berlin....Pages 141-156 Front Matter....Pages 157-157 The Re-Conceptualization of Space in Edwardian Prophecy Fiction: Heterotopia, Utopia and the Apocalypse....Pages 159-176 ‘No Less Than a Planet’: Scale-Bending in Modernist Fiction....Pages 177-193 The Unseen Side of Things: Eliot and Stevens....Pages 194-213 Front Matter....Pages 215-215 Two Towers, Plus One: The Ends of Utopia....Pages 217-230 Back Matter....Pages 231-235