Module Title: Utopian and Dystopian Fiction from Thomas More to Kazuo Ishiguro

Target population: 2nd year MA students, 2nd semester, 2016-17

Specialization: English
Module Tutor: Dr Elena Butoescu

Course Description:
This module will introduce students to various authors who portray utopian societies using subversive
narrative strategies and speculative fiction. The course will investigate the broad characteristics of
classic and contemporary works of British utopian and dystopian fiction from Thomas More to Kazuo
Ishiguro, from a classic work to the modern British utopian novel. The course will explore how
different worlds are imagined in utopian and dystopian fiction. The module aims to familiarise
students with the history and character of utopian thought and practice; to encourage students to think
critically and analytically about the ideal form of government, utopian ideals, and the impact that the
utopian imagination had on the development of science and technology; to introduce students to some
powerful conceptual tools with which to theorise the notions of utopia/dystopia/fantasy/science
fiction/heterotopias/ecotopia, etc. and their relation to writing and the perception of the surrounding
world; and to improve their written and oral skills through written assessment and class presentations.
The lectures will look into utopian and dystopian fiction, and into the techniques used by the authors.
The workshops will encourage students to work on and interpret other texts in relation to themes
discussed in the lectures and to present their own perspective on utopian thought, fiction, and
imagination.

Lectures:
1. Introduction. What is a utopia? What is a literary utopia? Theoretical and conceptual
issues in the construction of utopian fiction.
2. Defining the terms. Theorising the notions of utopia/dystopia/fantasy/science
fiction/heterotopias/ecotopia.
3. The Birth of Utopia. Plato, The Republic. The good place, the ideal place utopia and
totalitarianism.
4. Sir Thomas More, Utopia (1516). The imaginary island. Geography and History of Utopia.
The first British utopian society. How to define the term and avoid anachronism.
5. Utopia after Sir Thomas More. The Renaissance (I). Francis Bacon, The New Atlantis
(1627). The utopian land of generosity and rational knowledge. Sources and influences.
6. Utopia after Sir Thomas More. The Renaissance (II). Margaret Cavendish, The
Description of a New World, called The Blazing World (1666). Utopia as political restoration.
Satire and alegory in an imaginary kingdom.
7. Utopia after Sir Thomas More. The Enlightenment (I). Jonathan Swift, Gullivers Travels
(1726, 1735). Social matters and rational solutions in the land of the Houyhnhnms. The
perfect nature and the Enlightenment Project.
8. Utopia after Sir Thomas More. The Enlightenment (II). Samuel Johnson, The History of
Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia (1759). In search for Happiness Utopia and the Happy Valley.
9. Utopia in the Victorian Period. Mary Shelley, The Last Man (1826). The Apocalypse and
the end of civilization.
10. Sources of Dystopian Fiction (I). H. G. Wells, A Modern Utopia (1905). Modern utopia and
historical conflicts.
11. Sources of Dystopian Fiction (II). Aldous Huxley, Island (1962). Fantasy and the real topos.
12. Sources of Dystopian Fiction (III). George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949). Political
satire and totalitarianism.
13. Modern Dystopia. P. D. James, The Children of Men (1992). The Diary and the Narrative
Voice.
 14. Postmodern Utopia and Dystopia. Kazuo Ishiguro, Never Let Me Go (2005). An Elegy for
the lost time. Transplants and human cloning.
Workshops:
1. Sir Thomas More, Utopia (1516). The imaginary island.
2. Francis Bacon, The New Atlantis (1627)
3. Jonathan Swift, Gullivers Travels (1726, 1735). Daniel Defoe, Robinson Crusoe (1718). The
perfect nature and the Enlightenment Project.
4. Mary Shelley, The Last Man (1826) and Frankenstein (1869).
5. Francis Godwin, The Man on the Moone (1638) and H. G. Wells, The First Men in the Moon
(1901).
6. Aldous Huxley, Island (1962) and Brave New World (1932).
7. Kazuo Ishiguro, Never Let Me Go (2005)

Selected Bibliography:
Bacon, Francis. 'New Atlantis', in Three Renaissance Utopias: Utopia, New Atlantis, The Isle of
Pines, ed. by Susan Bruce. Oxford: World's Classics, 1999. Este disponibil i varianta n
limba romn, Francis Bacon, Noua Atlantid. Bucureti: Editura Nemira, 2007.
Cavendish, Margaret. Duchess of Newcastle, The Description of a New World called the Blazing
World: And other writings, ed. by Kate Lilley, Pickering Women's Classics (London: Pickering
& Chatto, 1992)
Claeys, Gregory. (ed.). The Cambridge Companion to Utopian Literature. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2010.
Claeys, Gregory and Lyman Tower Sargent. (eds.). The Utopia Reader. New York: New York
University Press, 1999.
Defoe, Daniel. The Life and Strange Surprizing Adventures of Robinson Crusoe of York, Mariner
[1719], ed. by J. Donald Crowley, London: Oxford University Press, 1965.
Haschak, Paul G. Utopian/Dystopian Literature: A bibliography of literary criticism. Metuchen, NJ:
Scarecrow Press, 1994.
Kendrick, Christopher. Utopia, Carnival, and Commonwealth in Renaissance England. Toronto:
University of Toronto Press, 2004.
Huxley, Aldous. Brave New World. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, Doran.
Huxley, Aldous. Island. New York: Harper & Row. Reprinted, London: Flamingo, 1994.
Ishiguro, Kazuo. Never Let Me Go. London: Faber and Faber, 2005.
Johnson, Samuel. The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abissinia, ed. by D. J. Enright, London:
Penguin, 1976.
Manuel, Frank E. and Fritzie P. Manuel, Utopian Thought in the Western World. Oxford: Blackwell,
1979.
More, Thomas. Utopia [1516], ed. by George M. Logan and Robert M. Adams, trans. by R. M.
Adams, revised student edn, Cambridge Texts in the History of Political Thought. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2002.
Plato, The Republic, ed. by G. R. F. Ferrari, trans. by Tom Griffith, Cambridge Texts in the History
of Political Thought. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000.
Swift, Jonathan. Gulliver's Travels [1726], ed. by Paul Turner, Oxford World's Classics. Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1986.
Venturi, Franco. Utopia and Reform in the Enlightenment. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1971.
Wells, H[erbert] G[eorge]. A Modern Utopia. London: Chapman and Hall, 1905. U.S. ed. New
York: Scribners, 1905. Reprinted, Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1967. Reprinted,
ed. Krishan Kumar. London: Everyman, 1994. Originally published in The Fortnightly Review
(October 1904April 1905).