LITR 5439 Literary & Historical Utopias

Founding Utopias

midterms

Thanks for work and for working with me--not taken for granted, but minimal opportunities for reflection.

Most midterms returned Sunday--if no email grade and note, let me know by email.

Anonymous tally of overall grades available--email to request

Re individual midterms: Reply, phone, or meet to discuss > improve on final

You're all doing high-level work, and always frustrating how hard it is to say so without going into tedious detail. Instead, criticism!

> problem identification, analysis, solution

Show yourself learning

Questions for today:

Utopia as Eden / Golden Age:

Sources of archetype?

Progress or reaction?

Utopian Collectives and Capitalist Individuality

Where do they meet and conflict or exchange?

What's in common?

earth provides without toil

Cockaigne or Cockayne

humans as innocent, honest

cf. obj. 1d. What other stylistic or affective elements recur? Examples: nostalgia, hope, alienation, displacement or transference, didacticism.

"Garden of Eden" > prevalence of gardens in utopian novels

Sexual / family modeling:

Adam & Eve as prototype of straight couple in nature and under God

Preview of Plato's Republic?

p. 68, "the healthy city"

"Garden" in Genesis--gardens in all our other texts

except Anthem (30 Uncharted Forest)

79 forest seemed to welcome us, song of our body

cf. Anthem & private home: utopia as hetero couple; cf. Prometheus & Golden One

90 then we knew that only two had lived here, and this passes understanding

91 “We shall never leave this house, nor let it be taken from us. This is our home and the end of your journey, . . . belongs to no other men. . . . We shall not share it with others.”

92-3 [cf. Genesis]

100 Gaea pregnant with my child. Our son will be raised as a man.

86 no life for men save in useful toil

Today's purposes:

Topic 5. Objective 3c asks, "Is the utopian impulse universal, or is it unique to western civilization, esp. in its modern phase?" Objective 3f asks, "What social structures, units, or identities does utopia expose or frustrate?" and refers to "ethnicity" as one such identity.

Must utopian studies follow the "Western Civilization" attitude of the dominant culture by insisting, along with utopian texts, that we're all in this together and equally? Or, given the mixed history of Western Civilization, does it invite and require the expression of racial or ethnic difference, resistance, or dissent?

Concentrate on the texts discussed on 19, 21, and 26 June, but try to involve other texts and at least one presentation from elsewhere in the course.

My personal-professional background for this question is that despite the diversification of literary studies, in my experience utopian studies ignores multicultural literature or engages it only tangentially. My conceptual problem with expanding utopian studies to include multicultural considerations is that the subject of utopia becomes stretched or changed to something else. But such a change may be productive of new meaning--maybe we just haven't gone there.

2005: read Genesis & Revelation followed by Octavia Butler's Parable of the Sower--millennium / apocalypse + some utopian or communal

+ multicultural: Butler (d. 2006) leading African American sf author

Students liked the reading, but treatment felt hurried

So this year an alternative approach

confronting "western civ" aspects of course

+ asking directly about multicultural limits or possibilities

Our texts today (and Thursday) are too great or multifaceted to be boxed up as utopian literature, but they offer some connections between utopian studies and literature beyond utopian fiction:

scripture and myth

government and economics ("social contract")

multicultural assertion of difference and equality (utopias may assert equality and sameness)

midterms, finals, assignments

midterms

midterm posting

After session ends, you may ask for any of your submissions to be removed from webpage; will do so, no questions asked

Otherwise submissions (midterm, final, presentation) will likely be there at least until next time course is taught, at which time selection may be culled.

I intend to return midterms by Friday evening, but anyway before next week's classes

finals