{"id":2543,"date":"2015-09-16T12:19:55","date_gmt":"2015-09-16T17:19:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/apps.lib.ua.edu\/blogs\/coolathoole\/?p=2543"},"modified":"2015-09-16T12:21:24","modified_gmt":"2015-09-16T17:21:24","slug":"the-year-of-utopia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/apps.lib.ua.edu\/blogs\/coolathoole\/2015\/09\/16\/the-year-of-utopia\/","title":{"rendered":"The Year of Utopia"},"content":{"rendered":"

The\u00a0College of Arts & Sciences is today kicking off\u00a0a year-long event, the Year of Utopia<\/a>. We wanted to get in on the action and showcase some volumes in Special Collections that help trace the literary history of the concept.<\/p>\n

Let’s start with the work that coined the term, Thomas More’s\u00a0Utopia\u00a0<\/em>(1516),\u00a0translated from Latin into English in 1551.\u00a0Utopia<\/em>\u00a0translates to “no place” (source<\/a>), but it also carries a connotation of sound-alike\u00a0eutopia<\/em>, or, “good place.”<\/p>\n

\"Utopia,<\/a>

Rare Books Collection HX811 1516 E751<\/p><\/div>\n

This volume is from exactly 200 years later. Much had changed in the country’s\u00a0government and society — notably, the English Civil War had happened, the Commonwealth experiment come and gone — but the yearning for a better society was a constant.<\/p>\n

In the wake of the Civil War, another meditation on the perfect society was published, James Harrington’s The Commonwealth of Oceana<\/em> (1656).<\/p>\n

\"Oceana,<\/a>

Rare Books Collection HX811 1656 .B37<\/p><\/div>\n

This volume is from 1737.<\/p>\n

Though similar works to these were published over the course of the 18th and 19th centuries, the 1880s-1890s saw a boom in utopias and counter-utopias, perhaps reflecting the major upheavals in western society that came with industrialization.<\/p>\n

In A Crystal Age <\/em>(1887), by W. H. Hudson,\u00a0a\u00a0narrator falls and hits his head, awakening to a new world of vegetarians who have mostly suppressed their human bodily urges.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/a>

Armed Services Collection AC1 .A7 G-196<\/p><\/div>\n

This volume is a 1944 Armed Services edition, intended to be read by a serviceman or -woman.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/a><\/p>\n

I’d imagine WWII was the perfect time to dream of a utopia.<\/p>\n

Edward Bellamy’s Looking Backward<\/em> (1888) started a long literary conversation on the concept of the perfect socialist society.<\/p>\n

\"Looking<\/a>

Rare Books Collection HX811 1887 .B213<\/p><\/div>\n

In his novel, the protagonist falls asleep in the late 19th c.\u00a0Boston\u00a0and awakens 113 years later to find himself in a heavily industrial society.<\/p>\n

The next year, William Morris, a socialist himself, published\u00a0News from Nowhere<\/em>, depicting a different sort of utopia, one more based on nature than machines.<\/p>\n

\"News<\/a>

Rare Books Collection HX811 1891 .M773<\/p><\/div>\n

We usually refer to this model as a Pastoral Utopia.<\/p>\n

Morris’s response was just one of many. Another was Looking Further Forward<\/em>, by R. C. Michaelis, which sees Bellamy’s utopia end in violent revolution. In 1891, in response Michaelis’s work, Ludwig Geissler published\u00a0Looking Beyond.<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Looking<\/a>

Rare Books Collection HX811 1891 .G4x<\/p><\/div>\n

This work took up where Bellamy left off by retconning the plot of Michaelis’s sequel, treating it as a bad dream or hallucination of the original protagonist.<\/p>\n

\"Looking<\/a><\/p>\n

For a full account of the responses and counter-responses, see this article<\/a>\u00a0on\u00a0Wikipedia.<\/p>\n

In 1894, William Dean Howells returned the genre to its satirical roots in A Traveler from Altruria.<\/em>\u00a0Like More, Howells derives his fictional society’s name from a particular term,\u00a0altruism<\/em>, which\u00a0means\u00a0“unselfish regard for or devotion to the welfare of others” (source<\/a>).<\/p>\n

\"A<\/a>

Crowley Collection PS2025 .T7 1894<\/p><\/div>\n

In this novel, modern Americans interact with Mr. Homos, from the utopian society of Altruria, and find their society wanting. The work was a comment on Gilded Age capitalism.<\/p>\n

Utopian fiction has a long history. The University Libraries hold many of these works, as well as secondary sources that discuss them. In Scout<\/a>, search by the subject\u00a0utopias<\/em> to find both.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The\u00a0College of Arts & Sciences is today kicking off\u00a0a year-long event, the Year of Utopia. We wanted to get in on the action and showcase some volumes in Special Collections that help trace the literary history of the concept. 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