Literary evening lectures: Mapping imaginary topographies and times: Literary utopias from the Renaissance to the present

This talk will consider the function of the literary utopia in political thinking. Thomas More's 1516 text, Utopia, coined a deliberately ambiguous term that signifies both eu-utopos (the “good place”) and ou-topos (“no place”) and used a complex framing device in which to couch his Renaissance vision of a perfect society. Since More’s originary text, then, the literary genre of utopia has encompassed a search for human perfection as well as the self-reflexive recognition that such a state of utopian governance cannot be achieved. From Francis Bacon’s scientific society in New Atlantis (1627) and Margaret Cavendish’s fantastical journey to The Blazing World (1666), Early Modern utopian narratives sought exotic utopian islands at the outer limits of the known world. By the late nineteenth century, however, such cartographic discoveries were no longer possible and utopian communities either moved across the galaxy or became projected into distant futures. Edward Bellamy’s Looking Backward (1888), William Morris’ News From Nowhere (1890) and H. G. Wells’ Men Like Gods (1923) all envisioned scientific and technological progress in the future, and their utopian travellers returned to the present with tales of socialism and advanced scientific development. By the 1960s and 1970s our belief in a better future was sufficiently enervated as to withdraw into self-contained utopias within otherwise dystopian texts - in novels by Marge Piercy, Joanna Russ and Ursula Le Guin. The talk will conclude by reflecting upon the sophistication of utopian narratives as a self-reflexive literary form, and their ongoing relevance for our own contemporary moment, at a time of increasingly dystopian political realities.