LITR 5737 Literary & Historical Utopias

Tuesday, 26 June: Instructor leads with page samples from Toni Morrison’s Paradise (1998; African American novel with utopian themes) and two virtual-reality novels with utopian themes (Neal Stephenson’s Snow Crash [1992] and Dennis Danvers’s Circuit of Heaven [1998])

Tuesday, 26 June: Instructor leads with page samples from Toni Morrison’s Paradise (African American novel with utopian themes) and two virtual-reality novels with utopian themes (Neal Stephenson’s Snow Crash [1992] and Dennis Danvers’s Circuit of Heaven [1998])

Historical presentation: Rainbow Gatherings: Donny Wankan

Web review: Ernest Callenbach sites on course webpage: Ruth Pilarte

Thursday, 28 June: conclude Ecotopia

Discussion-starter: Cindy Goodson

Historical presentation: Amish community / lifestyle: Kristen Bird

Historical presentation: New Urbanism: Yvonne Hopkins

Monday, 2 July: final exam due by Tuesday, 3 July at noon.

assignments, final exam

Thursday, 28 June: conclude Ecotopia

Discussion-starter: Cindy Goodson

Historical presentation: Amish community / lifestyle: Kristen Bird

Historical presentation: New Urbanism: Yvonne Hopkins

Objective 1. the Utopian Genre

1a. How to define the literary genre of “utopias?” What elements and difficulties repeatedly appear? What audiences are involved or excluded?

1b. What different genres contribute to, interface with, or branch from utopia? Examples: dystopia, ecotopia, Socratic dialogue, tract, propaganda, satire, science fiction, fantasy, novel / romance, adventure / travel narrative. Others?

Monday's class: newspaper announcement, diary, newspaper column, diary . . . .

(Diaries as components of fictional works have a long pedigree. "Epistolary novels" feature letters that tell a novel's story but in place of letters you may find extended diary or journal entries--e. g., Robinson Crusoe, Dracula)

Question: any other genre hybrids or surprises?

Objective 2. Utopian Narratives

2a. What kinds of stories rise from or fit with the attempt to describe an ideal or dystopian community? . . .

2c. What tensions rise between the author’s description of a social theory and the reader’s demand for a story?

Questions: How well does Ecotopia work as engaging or affective fiction as opposed to didactic or instructional literature?

Overall I think the characters aren't great, but the plot is about as good as one can manage for didactic purposes.

Defense of character development?

How would you describe the plot? What other texts or narratives are analogous, in this course or beyond?

My evolving multicultural objective in final exam question A2:

Topic A2. (Objectives 3c & 3f)
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. How do you reconcile utopia's pretensions to universality with modern needs for multicultural applications?

Please look out for references to race & ethnicity in Ecotopia.

Final exam

Thursday hand out paper copy of final exam, review

Trying for less blah-blah > sharpen questions

Malcolm X on Seventh-Day Adventists

original source of personal awareness of 7th-Day Adventists as multicultural religious group (though here they're still 99% white)

"Adventist" refers to "Second Advent" or "Second Coming"

In text, any clues as to connection b/w millennialism / utopianism and multiculturalism?

How about nature of multiculturalism?

Questions on multicultural texts for course

Review last Thursday's class on multicultural dimensions of utopian studies

Nominate other texts to consider in place of or addition to slave narratives, Dr. King's Dream speech, and Chief Seattle

Review last Thursday's class on multicultural dimensions of utopian studies

Multicultural texts potentially related to utopian studies
(readings for Thursday 21 June)

Selections from Olaudah Equiano slave narrative

Selections from Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass (1845)

Selections from Harriet Jacobs, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl (1861)

Selections from Dr. King's "Dream" speech

Chief Seattle's Speech

Instructor's comments

Dr. King's Dream speech seemed to work best

Other African American text possibilities, esp. if course is taught in long semester

Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man (1952)--esp. for "parallel world" or "world within a world" aspects; cf. grandmother baking crackers in Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl

Toni Morrison, Paradise (1997)

Octavia Butler, Parable of the Sower (1993)

Samuel R. Delany, Trouble on Triton: An Ambiguous Heterotopia (1976)

Colson Whitehead, The Intutionist (1999)

Other American Indian text possibilities? Mexican American?

Black Elk Speaks (1932) esp. chapters on "Ghost Dance" millennial movement

Leslie Marmon Silko, Almanac of the Dead (1991)

Link to 5733 syllabus

Trying not to make excuses, but trying also to avoid situation where a multicultural text is forced in and then doesn't work well with other texts

On the other hand, multicultural society requires multicultural readings

Practical issues:

Try to avoid making students read large amounts for just a few pages of relevance

Some conservative students may see such moves as "canon expansion by affirmative action."

Final test: Is the text working for the class?

Morrison's Paradise

Toni Morrison (b. 1931), Paradise (1998)

Title page and list of books--who's familiar with what?

What is Morrison's reputation?

1993 Nobel Prize for Literature--highest international award

First African American and American woman author to win

Experience reading, teaching? 

Toni Morrison probably among handful of greatest American authors

Faulkner, Whitman, James plus or minus Melville, Emily Dickinson, Wallace Stevens, T. S. Eliot, Eugene O’Neill

How establish greatness?

Quality: genius, courage, brilliance, daring, learning—James: “Be one of the people on whom nothing is wasted.”

Influence on later writers, influenced by previous writers: great writers seem to have read their important predecessors, and they push to the next level beyond what their predecessors achieved—process repeats in influence on later writers (for Morrison, it’s too early to judge influence on other writers)

Morrison’s style resembles Faulkner’s; she did a master’s thesis on Faulkner

Quantity of quality: a number of writers have written a few great works, but comparative thinness of great works affects reputation: Hemingway, Twain, Hawthorne, Fitzgerald all wrote great works, but either didn’t write as much or tended to repeat themselves

Another standard: number & power of distinct characters—in lesser writers, the characters seem alike, similarly motivated, similar profiles and imaginations, fewer in number

Great writers are almost god-like in their creation of human characters

Shakespeare is the gold standard; next is Dickens; Faulkner too

Morrison: characters seem always to have been there, self-existent—like they were waiting in some reality to meet you

Power of invention

Not an easy read, though--very challenging--

Reader learns, discovers + experiences delight in putting parts together--participates in creative process (Aristotle: "To learn gives the liveliest pleasure")

 What I discover in Morrison (esp. in Song of Solomon and Paradise):

Self-existent African American world

surprisingly whole unto itself, not defined strictly by reference to white world--white world is often kept at a distance or unremarked

Again a quality of great writers: to create a whole world, a microcosm or mirror: cf. Dickens's London, Dickens for Christmas

 Backstory for Paradise:

 Possible applications to utopian studies:

Compare journey from Haven to Ruby to Moses and chosen people on Exodus to Promised Land

(Recall that Dr. King made similar comparisons b/w himself and Moses)

compare Oven to Arc of the Covenant

"The Convent" as feminine / feminist counterpart to patriarchal town of Haven / Ruby (founded by Big Papa and Big Daddy)

"Convent"--compare to monastery that may have modeled More's Utopia, but for women rather than men

PBS interview of Toni Morrison

 virtual utopias: Snow Crash & Circuit of Heaven

virtual utopias

"virtual" refers to "virtual reality" or "virtual worlds"

The Matrix

computer-simulated environment

artificial reality

computer graphics

pop theory about humans migrating online

Austin TX as one center of cyberpunk movement (Bruce Sterling, Lewis Shiner, authors of "Mozart in Mirrorshades" etc.)

Other more current terms for virtual reality, cyberspace?

Virtual world = computer-based simulated environment

Second Life, Active Worlds, the Sims

still somewhat geeky, gaming community

Second Life

Wikipedia on Second Life

Users / avatars as “residents”

Linden Lab stated goal of creating world like Metaverse in Snow Crash

Snow Crash

Neal Stephenson (b. 1959), Snow Crash NY: Bantam, 1992

The Diamond Age 1995

Cryptonomicon 1999

The Baroque Cycle 2003-4; eight novels published in 3 volumes

Complexity and detail, pop-culture hip

6 dystopia > Burbclave = city-state

18 family

23-5 Hero at computer > Metaverse

26 freed from constraints of physics and finance (cf. genetics and conditions)

contrast with earth dystopia

32 apartheid Burbclaves

33 microplantation

35 avatars

36 gorilla, dragon

Metaverse as metaphor

37 off-she-shelf avatars—Brandy and Clint

38 a new ethnic group

57 Juanita and faces

58 ethnic group: military

63 Adam & Eve

69 Infocalypse

Circuit of Heaven

Dennis Danvers (b. 1947), Circuit of Heaven 1998 + End of Days 1999

2-3 add Newman Rogers; cf. Big Brother

13-14 cf. Genesis

16-17 Justine > bookshop

36-37 reality only better + maintain illusion of Metaverse

50-51 virtual birth

55 escalator + 60

62 parents

72-3 rapture & fire

84 underground

104 beautiful / same

183 garden city

190-1 Paradise Lost

310-311

Metaverse

Rob Horning, “Marginal Utility: Virtual Utopia.” PopMatters. 9 Oct. 2006.

http://www.popmatters.com/pm/columns/article/5897/virtual-utopia/

Virtual Utopia

http://www.geocities.com/Area51/Chamber/6168/

Virtual Utopia & Utopian Theory

http://www.resnet.trinity.edu/jcoleman/virtual.utopia.html

Second Life

EverQuest

World of Warcraft