Download Full eBooks in PDF
The Dystopian Impulse In Modern Literature Book in PDF, ePub and Kindle version is available to download in english. Read online anytime anywhere directly from your device. Click on the download button below to get a free pdf file of The Dystopian Impulse In Modern Literature book. This book definitely worth reading, it is an incredibly well-written.
Author : M. Keith Booker
Publisher : Praeger
Page : 216 pages
File Size : 42,5 Mb
Release : 1994-05-17
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : UOM:39015031799813
A detailed discussion of literary dystopias as social criticism in Zamyatin's We, Huxley's Brave New World, Orwell's 1984, and in contemporary works.
Author : M. Keith Booker
Publisher : Greenwood
Page : 428 pages
File Size : 45,5 Mb
Release : 1994-05-25
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : UOM:39015032443643
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.
Author : Katharine Burdekin
Publisher : Feminist Press at CUNY
Page : 212 pages
File Size : 43,6 Mb
Release : 1985
Category : Fiction
ISBN : 0935312560
In a "feudal Europe seven centuries into post-Hitlerian society, Burdekin's novel explores the connection between gender and political power and anticipates modern feminist science fiction."--Cover.
Author : John J. Pierce
Publisher : Praeger
Page : 248 pages
File Size : 55,6 Mb
Release : 1994-03-21
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : UOM:39015031825360
This book provides a detailed study of the relationship between science fiction and other genres. After discussing the problems inherent in classifying works according to genre, Pierce notes how science fiction sometimes incorporates plots from other literary forms. He then explores the relationship between science fiction and related genres, such as fantastic romances and techno-thrillers. The book next examines those science fiction writers who have successfully written in other literary forms, as well as authors active in other genres who have turned to science fiction to treat particular themes. Pierce also discusses the literary and stylistic aspects of science fiction. Throughout the book, Pierce's coverage is encyclopedic in nature. He provides examples from numerous works, and the volume closes with a detailed bibliography.
Author : M. Keith Booker
Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing USA
Page : 236 pages
File Size : 40,5 Mb
Release : 2002-01-30
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 9780313076350
In America, the long 1950s were marked by an intense skepticism toward utopian alternatives to the existing capitalist order. This skepticism was closely related to the climate of the Cold War, in which the demonization of socialism contributed to a dismissal of all alternatives to capitalism. This book studies how American novels and films of the long 1950s reflect the loss of the utopian imagination and mirror the growing concern that capitalism brought routinization, alienation, and other dehumanizing consequences. The volume relates the decline of the utopian vision to the rise of late capitalism, with its expanding globalization and consumerism, and to the beginnings of postmodernism. In addition to well-known literary novels, such as Nabokov's Lolita, Booker explores a large body of leftist fiction, popular novels, and the films of Alfred Hitchcock and Walt Disney. The book argues that while the canonical novels of the period employ a utopian aesthetic, that aesthetic tends to be very weak and is not reinforced by content. The leftist novels, on the other hand, employ a realist aesthetic but are utopian in their exploration of alternatives to capitalism. The study concludes that the utopian energies in cultural productions of the long 1950s are very weak, and that these works tend to dismiss utopian thinking as na^Dive or even sinister. The weak utopianism in these works tends to be reflected in characteristics associated with postmodernism.
Author : Tony Burns
Publisher : Lexington Books
Page : 332 pages
File Size : 48,7 Mb
Release : 2010-02-19
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 9780739144879
Ursula K. Le Guin's The Dispossessed is of interest to political theorists partly because of its association with anarchism and partly because it is thought to represent a turning point in the history of utopian/dystopian political thought and literature and of science fiction. Published in 1974, it marked a revival of utopianism after decades of dystopian writing. According to this widely accepted view The Dispossessed represents a new kind of literary utopia, which Tom Moylan calls a 'critical utopia.' The present work challenges this reading of The Dispossessed and its place in the histories of utopian/dystopian literature and science fiction. It explores the difference between traditional literary utopia and novels and suggests that The Dispossessed is not a literary utopia but a novel about utopianism in politics. Le Guin's concerns have more to do with those of the novelists of the 19th century writing in the tradition of European Realism than they do with the science fiction or utopian literature. It also claims that her theory of the novel has an affinity with the ancient Greek tragedy. This implies that there is a conservatism in Le Guin's work as a creative writer, or as a novelist, which fits uneasily with her personal commitment to anarchism.
Author : Adam Stock
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 224 pages
File Size : 43,9 Mb
Release : 2018-10-16
Category : Political Science
ISBN : 9781317326922
Over the past few years, ‘dystopia’ has become a word with increasing cultural currency. This volume argues that we live in dystopian times, and more specifically that a genre of fiction called "dystopia" has, above others, achieved symbolic cultural value in representing fears and anxieties about the future. As such, dystopian fictions do not merely mirror what is happening in the world: in becoming such a ready referent for discussions about such varied topics as governance, popular culture, security, structural discrimination, environmental disasters and beyond, the narrative conventions and generic tropes of dystopian fiction affect the ways in which we grapple with contemporary political problems, economic anxieties and social fears. The volume addresses the development of the narrative methods and generic conventions of dystopian fiction as a mode of socio-political critique across the first half of the twentieth century. It examines how a series of texts from an age of political extremes contributed to political discourse and rhetoric both in its contemporary setting and in the terms in which we increasingly cast our cultural anxieties. Focusing on interactions between temporality, spatiality and narrative, the analysis unpicks how the dystopian interacts with social and political events, debates and ideas, Stock evaluates modern dystopian fiction as a historically responsive mode of political literature. He argues that amid the terrors and upheavals of the first half of the twentieth century, dystopian fiction provided a unique space for writers to engage with historical and contemporary political thought in a mode that had popular cultural appeal. Combining literary analysis informed by critical theory and the history of political thought with archival-based historical research, this volume works to shed new light on the intersection of popular culture and world politics. It will be of interest to students and scholars in literary studies, cultural and intellectual history, politics and international relations.
Author : M. Keith Booker
Publisher : Greenwood
Page : 0 pages
File Size : 48,9 Mb
Release : 2015-03-10
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 9781610699358
"This encyclopedia brings together a wide variety of information on the relationship between literature and politics in a conveniently accessible encyclopedia format"--
Author : David W. Sisk
Publisher : Praeger
Page : 232 pages
File Size : 42,9 Mb
Release : 1997-12-30
Category : Biography & Autobiography
ISBN : UOM:39015043009367
As the 20th century has progressed, dystopian fiction has gained power as utopian fiction has become increasingly irrelevant. As an overtly didactic genre, dystopia extrapolates terrifying near-futures from disturbing current trends. In order to quickly create an atmosphere that is at once plausible and terrifying, dystopian writers almost universally turn to an idea certain to generate both fear and sympathy in the reader—the dual concept of language as the primary tool by which repressive societies stifle dissent, and simultaneously as the primary weapon used by rebels bent on understanding, resisting, and countering such oppression. This volume traces the evolution of language's centrality in 20th-century dystopias in English, including Brave New World, 1984, A Clockwork Orange, The Handmaid's Tale, Native Tongue, The Judas Rose, and Riddley Walker. The brilliance of Orwell's 1984 has led to a backlash: many critics have smugly asserted that, as the year 1984 has passed without taking the shape of his fiction, Orwell's novel and the dystopia in general have lost their affective power and relevance. But as the 20th century progresses, dystopian fiction has gained power as utopian fiction has become increasingly irrelevant. As an overtly didactic genre, dystopia extrapolates terrifying near-futures from disturbing current trends. In order to quickly create an atmosphere that is at once plausible and terrifying, dystopian writers almost universally turn to an idea certain to generate both fear and sympathy in the reader—the dual concept of language as the primary tool by which repressive societies stifle dissent, and simultaneously as the primary weapon used by rebels bent on understanding, resisting, and countering such oppression. This volume traces the evolution of language's centrality in 20th-century dystopias in English, beginning with Huxley's ^IBrave New World^R and Orwell's ^I1984^R. As dystopian fiction has branched out to embrace multiple viewpoints and agendas, the emphasis on language has remained at the center of the dystopian impulse. These include the first-person narrative dystopia, such as Anthony Burgess's ^IA Clockwork Orange^R; the feminist dystopia, such as Margaret Atwood's ^IThe Handmaid's Tale^R and Suzette Elgin's ^INative Tongue^R and ^IThe Judas Rose^R; and the post-apocalyptic/mythic dystopia, such as Russell Hoban's ^IRiddley Walker^R. While other scholars have often alluded to the importance of language within specific literary dystopias, this book transcends earlier studies by presenting a generic model of dystopian language use.
Author : Mary Elizabeth Theis
Publisher : Peter Lang
Page : 196 pages
File Size : 42,9 Mb
Release : 2009
Category : Foreign Language Study
ISBN : 0820428183
Because advances made by science and technology far outstripped improvements in human nature, utopian dreams of perfect societies in the twentieth century quickly metamorphosed into dystopian nightmares, which undermined individual identity and threatened the integrity of the family. Armed with technological and scientific tools, totalizing social systems found in literature abolish the distinction between public and private life and thus penetrate and corrupt the very core of all utopian blueprints and visions: the education of future generations. At the heart of the family, mothers as parents transmit their diverse cultural traditions while socializing their children and thus compete with ideologically driven systems that usurp their role as educators. Mothers and Masters in Contemporary Utopian and Dystopian Literature focuses, therefore, on the thematic importance of this and other maternal roles for generic metamorphosis: the shift to dystopia invariably is signaled by the inversion of traditional maternal roles. The longevity of the utopian-dystopian literary tradition and persistence of the maternal model of human relationships serve as points of reference in this post-modern age of relative cultural values. Meta-utopian exploration of this thematic tension between utopia and dystopia reminds us that «no place» may not be home, but we need to keep going there.
Author : Brett Josef Grubisic,Gisèle M. Baxter,Tara Lee
Publisher : Wilfrid Laurier Univ. Press
Page : 450 pages
File Size : 53,6 Mb
Release : 2014-06-16
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 9781771120562
What do literary dystopias reflect about the times? In Blast, Corrupt, Dismantle, Erase, contributors address this amorphous but pervasive genre, using diverse critical methodologies to examine how North America is conveyed or portrayed in a perceived age of crisis, accelerated uncertainty, and political volatility. Drawing from contemporary novels such as Cormac McCarthy’s The Road, Neil Gaiman’s American Gods, and the work of Margaret Atwood and William Gibson (to name a few), this book examines dystopian literature produced by North American authors between the signing of NAFTA (1994) and the tenth anniversary of 9/11 (2011). As the texts illustrate, awareness of and deep concern about perceived vulnerabilities—ends of water, oil, food, capitalism, empires, stable climates, ways of life, non-human species, and entire human civilizations—have become central to public discourseover the same period. By asking questions such as “What are the distinctive qualities of post-NAFTA North American dystopian literature?” and “What does this literature reflect about the tensions and contradictions of the inchoate continental community of North America?” Blast, Corrupt, Dismantle, Erase serves to resituate dystopian writing within a particular geo-social setting and introduce a productive means to understand both North American dystopian writing and its relevant engagements with a restricted, mapped reality.
Author : Carter F. Hanson
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 205 pages
File Size : 45,6 Mb
Release : 2020-06-09
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 9781000165951
For a genre that imagines possible futures as a means of critiquing the present, utopian/dystopian fiction has been surprisingly obsessed with how the past is remembered. Memory and Utopian Agency in Utopian/Dystopian Literature: Memory of the Future examines modern and contemporary utopian/dystopian literature’s preoccupation with memory, asserting that from the nineteenth century onward, memory and forgetting feature as key problematics in the genre as well as sources of the utopian impulse. Through a series of close readings of utopian/dystopian novels informed by theory and dialectics, Hanson provides a case study history of how and why memory emerged as a problem for utopia, and how recent dystopian texts situate memory as a crucial mode of utopian agency. Hanson demonstrates that many modern and contemporary writers of the genre consider the presence of certain forms of memory as necessary to the project of imagining better societies or to avoiding possible dystopian outcomes.
Author : Michael D. Gordin,Helen Tilley,Gyan Prakash
Publisher : Princeton University Press
Page : 302 pages
File Size : 55,9 Mb
Release : 2010-08-23
Category : History
ISBN : 9781400834952
The concepts of utopia and dystopia have received much historical attention. Utopias have traditionally signified the ideal future: large-scale social, political, ethical, and religious spaces that have yet to be realized. Utopia/Dystopia offers a fresh approach to these ideas. Rather than locate utopias in grandiose programs of future totality, the book treats these concepts as historically grounded categories and examines how individuals and groups throughout time have interpreted utopian visions in their daily present, with an eye toward the future. From colonial and postcolonial Africa to pre-Marxist and Stalinist Eastern Europe, from the social life of fossil fuels to dreams of nuclear power, and from everyday politics in contemporary India to imagined architectures of postwar Britain, this interdisciplinary collection provides new understandings of the utopian/dystopian experience. The essays look at such issues as imaginary utopian perspectives leading to the 1856-57 Xhosa Cattle Killing in South Africa, the functioning racist utopia behind the Rhodesian independence movement, the utopia of the peaceful atom and its global dissemination in the mid-1950s, the possibilities for an everyday utopia in modern cities, and how the Stalinist purges of the 1930s served as an extension of the utopian/dystopian relationship. The contributors are Dipesh Chakrabarty, Igal Halfin, Fredric Jameson, John Krige, Timothy Mitchell, Aditya Nigam, David Pinder, Marci Shore, Jennifer Wenzel, and Luise White.
Author : M. Keith Booker
Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing USA
Page : 206 pages
File Size : 46,5 Mb
Release : 2001-05-30
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 9780313073625
The 1950s are widely regarded as the golden age of American science fiction. This book surveys a wide range of major science fiction novels and films from the long 1950s--the period from 1946 to 1964--when the tensions of the Cold War were at their peak. The American science fiction novels and films of this period clearly reflect Cold War anxieties and tensions through their focus on such themes as alien invasion and nuclear holocaust. In this sense, they resemble the observations of social and cultural critics during the same period. Meanwhile, American science fiction of the long 1950s also engages its historical and political contexts through an interrogation of phenomena, such as alienation and routinization, that can be seen as consequences of the development of American capitalism during this period. This economic trend is part of the rise of the global phenomenon that Marxist theorists have called late capitalism. Thus, American science fiction during this period reflects the rise of late capitalism and participates in the beginnings of postmodernism, described by Frederic Jameson as the cultural logic of late capitalism.
Author : Gerald Farca
Publisher : transcript Verlag
Page : 435 pages
File Size : 41,6 Mb
Release : 2018-11-30
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 9783839445976
Video games permeate our everyday existence. They immerse players in fascinating gameworlds and exciting experiences, often inviting them in various ways to reflect on the enacted events. Gerald Farca explores the genre of dystopian video games and the player's aesthetic response to their nightmarish gameworlds. Players, he argues, will gradually come to see similarities between the virtual dystopia and their own ›offline‹ environment, thus learning to stay wary of social and political developments. In his analysis, Farca draws from a variety of research fields, such as literary theory and game studies, combining them into a coherent theory of aesthetic response to dystopian games.
