Literary & Historical Utopias: terms & themes

Conventions of utopian / dystopian literature

(to be developed throughout semester)

Character

visitor / intruder who arrives often for ulterior motives, needs to be re-educated

guide / instructor

love interest?

Settings

lost valley or newly discovered island or continent

gardens--Garden of Eden, competitive gardens in More's Utopia, the "garden city" of Boston in Looking Backward

Plot / Narrative

journey, either through physical space or time

Utopian novels: conversion of outsider to believer

Dystopian novels: liberation of inmate to outsider or revolutionary

millennial events punctuate or hinge time and history--millennial turning point as separation of past discord and new harmony

Viewpoint

visitor / intruder who arrives often for ulterior motives, defends error, anticipates reader's objections

Other stylistic devices

Socratic dialogue between intruder and guide

Utopia's are "talky" genres, betraying their intellectual audience

Values or issues

Conformity vs. individualism

cooperation vs. competition

equality vs. opportunity

community ownership vs. private property

communal vs collective dining

justice alternatives: retribution, restitution

Reconciliation of intellectual and manual labor

abolition of currency

"Models" for cooperative, communal society

extended family (possibly encouraging polygamy, polyandry, free love to blur lines of relation)

More, Utopia, Of the Traveling of the Utopians: . . . "[A]ccording to their plenty or scarcity, they supply or are supplied from one another, so that indeed the whole island is, as it were, one family." (42)

compare Herland, ch. 5: "You see, children were the—the RAISON D'ETRE in this country."

"The power of mother-love, that maternal instinct we so highly laud, was theirs of course, raised to its highest power; and a sister-love . . . ."

military organization  (modern armed services as "meritocracy")

Looking Backward, ch. 6: "That is," I suggested, "you have simply applied the principle of universal military service, as it was understood in our day, to the labor question."

Looking Backward, ch. 12: the duty of military service for the protection of the nation, to which our industrial service corresponds

Motivations, Incentives, Rewards for cooperative, communal behavior

Importance of examples--

competition of communities, not individuals

More, Utopia

4 patterns might be taken for correcting the errors of these nations among whom we live

31 gardens, emulation by streets [civic competition]

35 even the Syphogrants . . . work, that by their examples they may excite the industry of the rest of the people

Looking Backward: people work b/c they can follow their own professional interests

variations on single-family heterosexual / patriarchal / monogamous household*

Sexual variations, which may compromise an experimental community's appearance of a higher morality  .

marriage, monogamy

nature

purity

retribution

respect for elders

x-property

value of human life

*Historical utopias often attract "unattached" singles between childhood and full maturity. The Brook Farm community near Boston has been compared to college dorm life.