LITR 5737 Literary & Historical Utopias

Sir / Saint Thomas More, Utopia (1516)

Thursday, 31 May: Utopia

Discussion starter for Book 1, pp. 1-27; Book 2, pp. 28-57: Kristen Bird

Web review: Thomas More sites on course webpage: Amy Braselton

Monday, 4 June: conclude Utopia; begin Looking Backward (chapters 1-4; handout on historical impact)

Historical presentation: Utopian movements of the Renaissance: Fran Baines

Historical presentation: Liz Davis (open choice)

Tuesday, 5 June: Looking Backward (complete)

Discussion-starter: Donny L. Leveston

Historical Presentation: Danielle Lynch-Masterson (open choice)

Thursday, 7 June: begin Herland (through chapter 6--through p. 72 in Pantheon edition)

Discussion-starter: Fran Baines

Historical presentation: Oneida community / corporation—Tish Wallace

Web review: Charlotte Perkins Gilman sites on course webpage: Yvonne Hopkins

Question of attitudes toward studying utopias

Historical objective 3a.To investigate historical, nonfiction attempts by “communes,” “intentional communities,” or even nations to put utopian ideals into practice.

Admittedly, all utopian communities eventually fail (or at least submerge), but how to get beyond “They don’t work” as a discussion-stopper? (For instance, even if all utopias fail, that doesn’t stop people from imagining or attempting utopias.)

The word “utopia” comes from the title of Sir Thomas More’s utopian novel / tract of 1512, Utopia.  

The word is made up of Greek parts, formed either from 

ou (no) + topos (place, as in “topography”) to mean “no place,” 

or from 

eu (good, as in “euphoria”) + topos (place) to mean “good place.”

In what ways does Utopia resemble a novel? (Broadly, the "modern English novel" would not appear for app. 200 more years--DeFoe's Robinson Crusoe 1719)

Why does this question (of fictional status or genre) matter to the study of utopias?

Discussion starter for Book 1, pp. 1-27; Book 2, pp. 28-57: Kristen Bird

THE CONTRAST

“For if you suffer your people to be ill educated, and their manners to be corrupted from their infancy, and then punish them for those crimes to which their first education disposed them, what else is to be concluded from this, but that you first make thieves and then punish them?”  (Book 1, pages 10-11)

• Are the arguments the speaker points out against society logical and valid?  Do his arguments seem progressive or conservative?

THE UTOPIANS

Objective 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?:

In the narrative, we see aspects of a travel narrative and perhaps even a dystopia – example: the control of the government on every aspect of life, even travel.  Did you notice any other aspects from this objective – ecotopia, Socratic dialogue, tract, propaganda, satire, science fiction, fantasy, novel/romance, etc…?

Summary of the people: “The people are industrious, apt to learn, as well as cheerful and pleasant; and none can endure more labour, when it is necessary; but except in that case they love their ease.  They are unwearied pursuers of knowledge…They learned to write their characters, and to pronounce their language so exactly, had so quick an apprehension, they remembered it so faithfully, and became so ready and correct in the use of it, that it would have looked like a miracle if the greater part of those whom we taught had not been men both of extraordinary capacity and of a fit age for instruction.” (Book 2, page 55)

• What are some elements of the Utopian society that stood out to you or interested you the most in Book 2?

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

The speaker, when referring to Utopia, inserts traditionally positive terms that evoke nostalgia and hope – cheerful, pleasant, ease, pleasure, faithfully, miracle, abound, overplus – and for every potentially negative suggestion, he adds that the people accept it happily and abide by the rules.

• Is the writer making Utopia sound better than it is?  On Tuesday we discussed that utopias and dystopias can at times be synonymous.  Is that the inherent nature of a Utopia?

How to know Thomas More

1. Saint in Catholic Church (1935)

2. subject of 1966 film / drama A Man for All Seasons

3. Renaissance man / Christian Humanist

4. Author of Utopia (1516)

Historical background to More's Utopia (1516)

Printing press developed 1450s (Gutenberg Bibles)--More's traveler makes references to printing in Utopia

Discovery of America 1492--More makes direct references to travels and writings of Amerigo Vespucci

Renaissance (1400s-1500s) as revival of humanistic and empirical thought from Classical Greece and Rome, in contrast to emphasis on divine revelation and tradition in Middle Ages

Rise of modern "power politics" in statesmanship, formalized in Machiavelli's The Prince -- Utopia, especially in its emphasis on "If I were advising a leader" bits, often seems like a reply to The Prince that differs by emphasizing the need for leaders to be humble and models of virtuous behavior rather than power players.

Christian humanism

"Note," p. iii: Erasmus as editor

17 Plato

2d. How essential is “millennialism” (apocalyptic or end-time narrative) to the utopian narrative?

Book II, pp 28-9

"Admiration and terror" = sublime

defining utopia

4 monsters x states that are well and wisely governed

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

4 manners and laws of the utopians, commonwealth

17 Plato, philosophers > kings, kings > philosophers

28 island of Utopia [cf. Britain]

In what ways does Utopia resemble a novel?

(Broadly, the "modern English novel" would not appear for app. 200 more years--DeFoe's Robinson Crusoe 1719

(But . . . the epic prefigures the novel, and the Renaissance had plenty of "romances" around that are basically proto-novels)

formal features of fiction: narrative + dialogue

genres overview

Huckleberry Finn

Utopia 2-3 scene, dialogue, narrative

+ Bakhtin: "meeting on the road"

In utopian fiction, tendency to expand "dialogue" into "Socratic dialogue" on philosophical issues

What is "didactic literature?"

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

II, 40 "some lecture of morality"

1c. Can utopias join science fiction, speculative fiction, and allied genres in constituting a “literature of ideas?”

Roman poet Horace: "Literature should entertain and instruct."

Lacking plot, what literary pleasures?

84 character interplay

proverbs 2, 7

anecdote 6-7

figurative speech

21 analogy, proverb

23 no ill simile

25 analogy of a sick man

[rhetoric x poetics]

cf science fiction

33 Tranibors

67 Zapolets

80 hieroglyphics

28 Utopus, Abraxas

28 separated them from the continent, deep channel dug

family issues

29-30 [chicken family modifications]

34 trade from father to son; if change, adopted into another family

37 none of their cities may contain above six thousand families

37 removing some of the children of a more fruitful couple to any other family that does not abound so much in them

40 child considers nurse as mother

42 the whole island is, as it were, one family

property / capital vs. human capital / merit

22 philosophical way of speculation > friends, x-court

22 not able to make them go well they may be as little ill as possible; for except all men were good everything cannot be right

23 Plato contrives, Utopians practice . . . so different from our establishment, which is founded on property, there being no such thing among them

25 analogy of sick man

25 [common sense to the contrary]

31 there being no property among them, every man may freely enter into any house whatsoever. At every ten years end they shift their houses by lots

34 no man may live idle, but do not wear themselves out with perpetual toil

34 6 hrs of labor

35 a small proportion of time would serve for doing all that is either necessary, profitable, or pleasant to mankind, especially while pleasure is kept within its due bounds.

37 improvement of their minds, in which they think the happiness of life consists [cf. Weber]

38 laws x-pomp, glory, pride, excess

43 folly of men has enhanced the value of gold and silver, because of their scarcity . . .  Nature, as an indulgent parent, has greely given us all the best things in great abundance, such as water and earth, but has laid up and hid from us the things that are vain and useless.

50 heap up wealth for contemplation and joy of it? [neglects re-investment of Protestant work ethic]

69 [human capital]

Mithras

Preview of Looking Backward 

priority question for first part of midterm: What formal and historical resemblances between More's Utopia and Bellamy's Looking Backward?

How do you start building a working definition of "utopian text" or "utopian novel" from these examples?

historical background

full title: Looking Backward, 2000-1887

historical context of "Gilded Age" of late 19th century

"Robber Barons" and "Captains of Industry"

rapid urbanization

rising immigration, surplus of workers, exploitation plus cultural change from "Anglo"-dominant North American society to more diverse

3c. Is the utopian impulse universal, or is it special to western civilization, esp. in its modern phase? Has the utopian impulse become extinct or evolved? Is utopia “progressive / liberal” or “reactionary / conservative?”

good introduction to Modern Library edition

other Utopian literary / cultural sources

Impact of Looking Backward on history

publishing sensation, discussion groups formed (cf. Purpose-Driven Life?)

influence of "Progressive Movement" of early 20th century?

(progressive taxation, environmental and health regulations, worker protection)

Ergo historically exciting, but a somewhat dull reading experience--clear and readable, though.

2a. What problems of plot or narrative rise from a utopian vision that minimizes conflict and maximizes description or exposition of success and harmony? What genre variations derive from these problems with plot?

2b. How much does the “plotlessness” of utopian fiction correspond to or circumvent the problem of arriving at utopia?

In both Looking Backward and Herland, the journeys to the utopia may be the most dramatic episodes

What parts work best?

What drives you crazy?

What does the report leave out?

If you were writing a dystopian counter-text to Looking Backward, which characters or scenes would you redevelop or diverge from?

seminar > midterm

undergrads mostly attend lecture or workshop classes

graduate students participate in seminars

seminar styles vary with instructors, not only their personalities but their models

basic distinctions from undergrad course:

students lead more

professor lectures less, asks questions, organizes and manages discussions

rationale: students are becoming professionals, not just sitting there absorbing but practicing, expressing

+ most professors, as much as they apparently love to hear themselves talk, eventually get bored with themselves and prefer the variety and novelty of discussion

Always trade-offs between emphasizing discussion or lecture

As a student I disliked student discussion b/c it was often obvious or redundant; preferred lectures b/c prof knew more than anyone else

Conclusion: discussion turned out to be better overall--makes literature a social action, tests ideas in action

In my seminar style, most lecture is either introductory--that is, it sets up an issue to be discussed--or it shows up at moments in a class when discussion might be counter-productive

(like now, at end of week, when everyone is ready to go, and a student who joined in discussion might be ostracized)

But a good grad student in Literature can veg and track at the same time . . . .

Back to tension or exchange of leadership between professor and students

Efforts to involve and train students in discussion are honest and good-enough

Overall a seminar is a well-practiced way to train students to interact with other smart people, both learning from others and expressing their own views

But it's not like the game's not rigged in a number of ways, with the prof holding the cards

The professor is responsible for never vegging, for reading and evaluating all the seminar's written work

On a larger scale, in humanities courses like this one, the whole concept of the course depends on the instructor in front

If not me, probably not "Utopias" but something else comparably unique and inventive

Conclusion: No matter how open the seminar may seem, there's an agenda that's set and in play

What's the agenda?

As professionals, this is what people are constantly at work figuring out: Who, what, when, and where is the really important work being done? And how do I contribute?

The operating code for our course is the course objectives

Responsibility for students:

Develop and express your own original contributions, but make them connect to the course through the language of the objectives

Midterm

Schedule

Midterm drafts 2005

My overall point: No way to avoid or erase the inherent tensions between individual and social life, but through some combination of planning, honesty, and priority such tensions can be managed.

Objective 4e. How may a seminar classroom serve as a microcosm, model, or alternative for American culture?

Leftover notes from 2005 seminar