LITR 5737 Literary & Historical Utopias

Tuesday, 7 June: Looking Backward; Herland

assignments, midterm

Discussion: Donny

[break]

Historical presentation: Liz Davis on Christianopolis

utopian novels as novels

millennialism in Looking Backward


Edward Bellamy

Tuesday, 5 June: Looking Backward (complete)

Discussion-starter: Donny L. Leveston

Historical Presentation: Liz Davis: Christianopolis

 

 

assignments, midterm

 

 

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

 

Monday, 11 June: conclude Herland

Historical presentation: Jo Lynn Sallee (open choice)

Discussion-starter: Brouke M. Rose-Carpenter

Web review: Ayn Rand sites on course webpage: Donny Wankan

 

Tuesday, 12 June: Anthem

Historical presentation: Brouke M. Rose-Carpenter (feminist utopias)

Discussion-starter: Tish Wallace

 

Thursday, 14 June: Anthem

Historical presentation: Amy Braselton: Islamic utopias or utopias gone too far

Roundtable discussion on midterms

 

Monday, 18 June: midterm

 

 

Assignments for Herland

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

 

Charlotte Perkins Gilman 1860-1935--lived from Civil War to New Deal

niece of Harriet Beecher Stowe, author of Uncle Tom's Cabin

--most familiar to recent English / Women's Studies majors as author of feminist classic The Yellow Wallpaper (1892)

Mostly self-employed and self-publishing sociologist / economist / social reformer concerned with women's issues.

Herland first appeared in 1915 in Perkins Gilman's magazine The Forerunner, 1909-1916

What's impressive about Perkins Gilman's style as well as the subject matter?

 

A woman-authored utopia! --> consequences for style, subject

Scenario: Three men visit "hidden valley" of all-woman society

Classic not just of "feminism" but of "gender studies"

How much is Herland about the men who visit it? What are their assumptions about women and civilization, etc.?

 

What conventions of utopian fiction continue?

("conventions" here means formulas, standard or stock elements)

Some changes in style and emphasis result, but what problems b/w "utopia" and "fiction" remain? (characterization, plot, etc.)

What surprises?

Millennial back-story to this utopia too

 

 

 

 

Discussion-starter: Donny L. Leveston

5 June 2007

A Contemporary Reading on Looking Backward: 2000--1887

Edward Bellamy’s Looking Backward: 2000--1887 is, like More’s Utopia, another example of a utopian text. Bellamy presents his text in a science fiction/futuristic style. The text embodies elements of personal and descriptive narratives, as well as Socratic dialogue. Bellamy centers the work on the idea of a “near perfect” society governed by a central government, or “common people” as referred to by the text.  The two main characters, Mr. West, the hero, and Mr. Leete, West’s “Mephistopheles,” well, his guide of sorts, look into West’s past as they compare nineteenth-century society to Leete’s more contemporary modernistic society.

            As one moves through the novel, the idea of the “Industrial Army,” like “time,” is constantly resurfacing. The author, undoubtedly, with his uncanny ability to look into the future--imagined this army to be the catalyst of a perfect society. However, if the seminar looks closely at this army, shades, or elements of Alan Wood’s V for Vendetta resonate. For example, behind the totalitarian government in Vendetta, the tribune answered to one leader, who controlled the tribune and all of the subjects. We know what this means in dystopian novels, but what does it mean in utopian novels, at least in Bellamy’s Looking Backward: 2000--1887?    

Objectives:

            1b. Socratic dialogue:

                        “…What solution, if any, have you found for the labor question?”

“As no such thing for the labor question is known nowadays…and there is no way in which it could arise…” (49).

            2d./3c. End-time/Universal:

“I know, as well as I know that the world now is heaven compared with what it was in your day, that the only feeling you will have after a little while will be one of thankfulness to God that your life in that age was sp strangely cut off, to be returned to you in this” (70).

            3a./c. Intentional Communities:  

“Yes…the great nations of Europe as well as Australia, Mexico, and parts of South America, are now organized industrially like the United States, which was the pioneer of the evolution” (103).

            4c. “Utopia too simplistic:”

The idea of the “Industrial Army” is over generalized and the ends that it produces seem too good to be true. Furthermore, the text downplays wealth, but emphasizes it when the question arises again.

·        The novel paints a picture of a perfect society, but elements of dystopia appear as well.

ü      Women’s roles

ü      “Invalids”

·        “Time” is a recurring motif within the text that the seminar can investigate based on Objective 3g.

ü      A hundred year difference comes into question at the beginning of the novel.

ü      Time and evolution seem to work together within the text.

·        The text claims equality for all.

ü      Jobs

ü      Health care provisions

Mr. Leete clearly views his world as “the land of milk and honey,” even if the milk is sour and the honey is bitter. How is it that Leete’s world really is no better than Mr. West’s, or is it?

The novel depicts a society that is near perfect, which we have discussed earlier. How is it that there is a president of the United States? Leete argues that all people are the same, on one hand; he then argues, on the other hand, that there are different social standings for magistrates, tribunal members, and the president, explain this?

There were no posting from the 2005’s class on Looking Backward: 2000--1887.

The following is a list of some web sites to investigate Bellamy’s text further as well as some utopian companion texts:

 

 

 

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

Define "millennialism?"

1. A thousand years . . . .

Looking Backward ch. 4

"Only a century has passed," [Dr. Leete] answered, "but many a millennium in the world's history has seen changes less extraordinary."

2nd meaning: "millennium" can mean refer spec. to the "thousand-year reign" following the Second Coming, or more broadly as a synonym for "apocalypse," "end-times," prophecy, etc.

 

Tuesday, 19 June: selections from Genesis & Revelation; the Book of Acts; Plato’s Republic; American founding documents

Historical presentation: Heaven as utopia?—Cindy Goodson

Preview of Dr. King’s Dream Speech: Liz Davis

Thursday, 21 June: alternative or multicultural utopias: selections from African American slave narratives; Dr. King’s Dream Speech; Toni Morrison’s Paradise; speech by Chief Seattle;

Web review: Jehovah’s Witnesses, Seventh-Day Adventists: Carmen Ashby

 

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

Millennium or apocalypse can take many forms, but very frequently involved in utopian stories

Why?

 

Millennium usually implies a large-scale change--everything changes at once--

Revelation: "New Heaven and New Earth"

 

 

Looking Backward: less violent change, but look for moments where Dr. Leete tries to explain how or why things changed

How convincing? What possible suspicions?

What are the reader's options?

 

 

 

Looking Backward published 1888

Charles Darwin, Origin of Species 1859

Scopes Monkey Trial 1925 ( > Inherit the Wind)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

"Millennialism" in both Looking Backward & Herland

2c. How does the introduction of “millennialism” (end-time or apocalyptic narrative) transform the plot of the utopian narrative?

Herland creation story depends on violent apocalyptic narrative

Looking Backward depends on an alternative "post-millennial" millennialism that is a tradition in liberal American Christianity--less about Judgment Day, more about establishment or fulfillment of Kingdom of God on Earth, America as "New Jerusalem" (Brook Farm, the Transcendentalist Utopia, started with similar theories by Unitarian ministers.)

 

Looking Backward

1 so prodigious a material and moral transformation

 

 

 

Campanella's City of the Sun

Northrop Frye, "Varieties of Literary Utopias." Utopias and Utopian Thought, ed. Frank E. Manuel (Cambridge: Riverside, 1966). 25-49.

27  The symbol of conscious design in society is the city. . . .  The utopia is primarily a vision of the orderly city and of a city-dominated society.