Utopia

ConorOberstIsGo · 1413158. Thu Jun 16, 2022 4:43 am

Utopian Studies is a Masters Of Research available at several UK Universities such as Plymouth, where the field of Utopian Studies is articulated in three aspects:

a. early modern literatures (eg Thomas More’s Utopia)
b. 20th-century utopian theory (eg the Frankfurt School)
c. contemporary practical utopias (eg intentional communities and eco-villages)

Many of the things we have today were pioneered in utopian experiments; the Victorian/modern classroom format was created by Tommaso Campanella, and the welfare system was just Beveridge's refinement of many social experiments. Most British Prime Ministers - up until Churchill - spent time in a social experimental community around the time of their higher education. The influence of utopias is put in a more compelling and concise way at the start of Chris Coates' Utopia Britannica

Utopia Britannica: v. 1: British Utopian Experiments: 1325-1945 by Chris Coates

Thomas More's Utopia could potentially be the earliest Western novel though it was probably only distributed to an audience of a dozen people, all of who would have to understand ancient Greek and Latin to get the full experience: The name Utopia could be translated as 'good/true place' and also 'no place'.

crissdee · 1413184. Thu Jun 16, 2022 11:37 am

I can't say I studied it in any great depth, but I did take part in a seminar presentation at university, discussing utopias and dystopias. My own contribution was titled "Utopian Dystopias and Dystopian Utopias", just to spark discussion/muddy the waters......

Alexander Howard · 1413496. Tue Jun 21, 2022 8:35 am

'Utopia' does not, etymologically mean 'a good world' but 'nowhere'. It was Thomas More's invention, describing his ideal society as in a land called 'Nowhere'. In a similar way, Samuel Butler called his fictional land 'Erewhon'.

As More's 'Utopia' was to be a strictly regulated society barely above slavery (and with actual slavery practised) it is not the best model for an idyll.

Margaret Cavendish wrote another 'utopian' fiction (The Blazing World) but which was largely satirical of the philosophers an speculators of her age, with whom she was familiar and sometimes on terms of friendship: in the end her Empress calls the whole thing off as having caused more trouble than it solved. When she describes her actual idyll, it is England.

I do not know of an etymologically sound word for an idealised world. Maybe adding an 'e': 'eutopia'.

For the opposite, Anthony Burgess, in '1985', uses the word 'cacotopia', as a better word than 'dystopia' as we use now - κακος being the opposite of ευ.

ConorOberstIsGo · 1413498. Tue Jun 21, 2022 8:49 am

crissdee · 1413509. Tue Jun 21, 2022 11:52 am

News from Nowhere by William Morris was quite good, a man travels to the future and finds parliament disbanded and the Houses of Parliament repurposed as a manure store.....

suze · 1413511. Tue Jun 21, 2022 12:02 pm

PDR · 1413512. Tue Jun 21, 2022 12:04 pm

I'm sure there was a film about it - isn't Cacotopia somewhere east of Java?

PDR