Utopia / Dystopia: The Future in Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century Literature

Overview

In the late nineteenth century, utopian literature met speculative fiction: the ‘nowhere’ of utopia was reimagined as the future, which was conceived as both the best and worst possible worlds. This course examines a variety of late nineteenth-century utopias and dystopias, but also shows the ways this imaginative tradition shaped literary prediction in the twentieth century (including works by Aldous Huxley, George Orwell and Margaret Atwood). It considers the ways twentieth-century writers both engaged with their literary predecessors and rewrote utopian and dystopian traditions to speak to the urgency of their own political moments. From the dangers and promises of science and technology to the future of feminism, socialism, race and mass culture, we will explore what utopias and dystopias reveal about their own historical moments, and analyze the claim that one person’s utopia is another’s dystopia.

Indicative selection of texts

Edward Bulwer Lytton, The Coming Race
H. G. Wells, The Time Machine
William Morris, News from Nowhere
Catherine Helen Spence, A Week in the Future
Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Herland
E. M. Forster, ‘The Machine Stops’
Aldous Huxley, Brave New World
George Orwell, 1984
Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid’s Tale

Learning Objectives

At the end of this course, students will be able to analyze the evolving generic traits of political fantasy in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and will have gained an understanding of utopian, dystopian and speculative fiction as literary forms. They will be able to relate utopian and dystopian fiction to social debates and historical changes in the period in which it was produced (including debates over feminism, socialism, evolutionary biology and eugenics and the future of democracy and mass culture). They will be capable of analyzing the political function of utopian and dystopian literature, and the role of reading communities in the evolution of the genre. Students will be able to use their understanding of genre to reflect on continuities with as well as changes between late Victorian and twentieth-century literature.

Skills

• A demonstrable understanding of the relationship between the political and the literary, and an ability to see the relevance of debates generated by this ‘literature of ideas’ to the present as well as the past
• Transferrable skills in the forms of group discussion, ability to present material to peers and individual research and essay writing skills – the ability to synthesize texts and create a clear analytical argument
• The ability to interweave close and historical reading skills – a demonstrable awareness of the ways historical and cultural change shapes literary form within political fantasy from the nineteenth to the twentieth century
• Ability to apply theoretical and historical debates over genre (utopian and dystopian and speculative fiction) to a range of literary contexts
• An ability to show the ways fiction is shaped by reading communities as well as writers (including socialist and feminist readerships).

Assessment

None