Since the publication of Thomas More's genre-defining work Utopia in 1516, the field of utopian literature has evolved into an ever-expanding domain. This Companion presents an extensive historical survey of the development of utopianism, from the publication of Utopia to today's dark and despairing tendency towards dystopian pessimism, epitomised by works such as George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four and Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale. Chapters address the difficult definition of the concept of utopia, and consider its relation to science fiction and other literary genres. The volume takes an innovative approach to the major themes predominating within the utopian and dystopian literary tradition, including feminism, romance and ecology, and explores in detail the vexed question of the purportedly 'western' nature of the concept of utopia. The reader is provided with a balanced overview of the evolution and current state of a long-standing, rich tradition of historical, political and literary scholarship.

Dystopian literature is a potent vehicle for criticizing existing social conditions and political systems. While utopian literature portrays ideal worlds, dystopian literature depicts the flaws and failures of imaginative societies. Often these societies are related to utopias, and the dystopian writers have chosen to reveal shortcomings of those social systems previously considered ideal. This reference overviews dystopian theory and summarizes and analyzes numerous dystopian works. By reviewing the critical thought of particular dystopian theorists, the beginning of the volume provides a theoretical context for the remainder of the book. Because dystopian literature is so closely related to utopian writing, the reference profiles and discusses eight important utopian works. The rest of the book includes entries for numerous dystopian novels, plays, and films. Each entry summarizes the work and discusses dystopian themes. The entries include short bibliographies, with full bibliographic information provided at the end of the volume. This comprehensive guide covers the full period from Thomas More's Utopia to the present day.

This volume examines a variety of utopian writing for children from the 18th century to the present day, defining and exploring this new genre in the field of children's literature. The original essays discuss thematic conventions and present detailed case studies of individual works. All address the pedagogical implications of work that challenges children to grapple with questions of perfect or wildly imperfect social organizations and their own autonomy. The book includes interviews with creative writers and the first bibliography of utopian fiction for children.

Utopia and Dystopia in Tolkien’s Legendarium explores how Tolkien’s works speak to many modern people’s utopian desires despite the overwhelming dominance of dystopian literature in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. It also examines how Tolkien’s malevolent societies in his legendarium have the unique ability to capture the fears and doubts that many people sense about the trajectory of modern society. Tolkien’s works do this by creating utopian and dystopian longing while also rejecting the stilted conventions of most literary utopias and dystopias. Utopia and Dystopia in Tolkien’s Legendarium traces these utopian and dystopian motifs through a variety of Tolkien’s works including The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, The Silmarillion, Book of Lost Tales, Leaf by Niggle,and some of his early poetry. The book analyzes Tolkien’s ideal and evil societies from a variety of angles: political and literary theory, the sources of Tolkien’s narratives, the influence of environmentalism and Catholic social doctrine, Tolkien’s theories about and use of myth, and finally the relationship between Tolkien’s politics and his theories of leadership. The book’s epilogue looks at Tolkien’s works compared to popular culture adaptations of his legendarium.

Reproduction of the original: Erewhon Revisited by Samuel Butler

Women’s Utopian and Dystopian Fiction explores the genres of utopian and dystopian recent fiction. It is about how this literature of both imagined perfection and disaster creates new worlds and critiques gender roles, traditions, and values. Essays range in subject matter from Charlotte Perkins Gilman, P. D. James, Joanna Russ, and Marge Piercy, to Ursula Le Guin, Fay Weldon, and Toni Morrison. Two of the three sections focus on Doris Lessing and Margaret Atwood. Examining especially the twentieth century, including second-wave feminism, writers from Tunisia, Turkey, Italy, Korea, the US, and England give both an historical and a global perspective. Utopian and dystopian elements are explored in the Nobel-Prize-winning Doris Lessing’s Memoirs of a Survivor, the little-known Mara and Dann, and The Cleft; and new perspectives are offered on Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale.

This book is about the fiercely contrasting visions of two of the nineteenth century’s greatest utopian writers. A wide-ranging, interdisciplinary study, it emphasizes that space is a key factor in utopian fiction, often a barometer of mankind’s successful relationship with nature, or an indicator of danger. Emerging and critically acclaimed scholars consider the legacy of two great utopian writers, exploring their use of space and time in the creation of sites in which contemporary social concerns are investigated and reordered. A variety of locations is featured, including Morris’s quasi-fourteenth century London, the lush and corrupted island, a routed and massacred English countryside, the high-rises of the future and the vertiginous landscape of another Earth beyond the stars.