The Utopia Reader

The Utopia Reader is a timely and provocative collection of utopia texts ... and an excellent introduction to the vast field of utopianism.--MoreanaUtopian literature has given voice to the hopes and fears of the human race from its earliest days to the present. The only single-volume anthology of its kind, The Utopia Reader encompasses the entire spectrum and history of utopian writing-from the Old Testament and Plato''s Republic, to Sir Thomas More''s Utopia and George Orwell''s twentieth century dystopia, Nineteen Eighty-Four, through to the present day.The editors of this definitive collection demonstrate the various ways in which utopias have been used throughout history as veiled criticism of existing conditions and how peoples excluded from the dominant discourse-such as women and minorities-have used the form to imagine empowering alternatives to present circumstances.An engaging tour through the dissident, polemic, and satirical tradition of utopian writing, The Utopia Reader ultimately provides a telling portrait of civilization''s persistent need to imagine and construct ideal societies.Table of Contents1. Introduction 12. Utopianism before Thomas More 6The Golden Age 7Hesiod, Works and Days 7Ovid, Metamorphosis 8Vergil, Fourth Eclogue 8Earthly Paradises 9The Garden of Eden 9Genesis 9The Elysian Fields 12Pindar, Fragments 12Islands of the Blest 12Horace, Epode 16 12The Middle Ages 13Eden 13Dracontius 13The Land of Prester John 14The Lawgivers 15Solon 15Lycurgus 16Utopias and Utopian Satires 27Plato, Republic 27Aristophanes, Ecclesiazusae 56The Prophets 59Isaiah 59Hellenistic Utopias 60Iambulus, Heliopolis 60Saturnalia 64Lucian, Saturnalia 64The Millennium 66The Revelation of St. John 67II Baruch 67Monasticism 68The Rule of St. Benedict 68The Rule of St. Francis 70The Cockaigne 71Telecleides 71Cockaigne 713. The Sixteenth Century 77Thomas More, Utopia 77Francois Rabelais, The Abbey of Theleme 94Michel de Montaigne, Of the Cannibals 994. The Seventeenth Century 104Joseph Hall, Mundus alter et idem 104William Shakespeare, The Tempest 105Tommaso Campanella, The City of the Sun 106Francis Bacon, New Atlantis 118Gerrard Winstanley, The Law of Freedom in a Platform 126Margaret Cavendish, The Inventory of Judgements Commonwealth 128James Harrington, The Commonwealth of Oceana 1375. The Eighteenth Century 141Jonathan Swift, Gulliver''s Travels 141Louis Sebastien Mercier, Memoirs of the YearTwo Thousand Five Hundred 152Nicolas-Edme Restif de la Bretonne, L''andrographe 163William Godwin, Enquiry Concerning Political Justice 170Timothy Dwight, Greenfield Hill 175Antoine-Nicolas de Condorcet, Sketch for a Historical Pictureof the Progress of the Human Mind 176Thomas Spence, The Constitution of Spensonia 1806. The Nineteenth Century 182Communal Societies as Utopias 182Shakers 182Frederick William Evans, The Shaker Compendium 183The Millennial Laws 183Shaker Covenant 185Amana or the Community of True Inspiration 186The Twenty-One Rules 186Oneida 190System of Criticism 191Charles Fourier, Selections Describing the Phalanstery 192American Fourierism 199Albert Brisbane, Association 200Charles Henri de Saint-Simon, Sketch of a NewPolitical System 202John Adolphus Etzler, The Paradise within Reach of All Men 206Robert Owen, The Book of the New Moral World 207'tienne Cabet, Voyage to Icaria 219Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, The Communist Manifesto 227Samuel Butler, Erewhon 229Edward Bellamy, Looking Backward: 2000Ð1887 240William Morris, News from Nowhere 273Ignatius Donnelly, Caesar''s Column 292William Dean Howells, A Traveler from Altruria 3017. The Twentieth Century 312H. G. Wells, A Modern Utopia 312Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Herland 319Yvgeni Zamiatin, We 329Katherine Burdekin, Swastika Night 344Aldous Huxley, Brave New World 347Brave New World Revisited 362Olaf Stapledon, Darkness and the Light 363B. F. Skinner, Walden Two 372Walden Two Revisited 390George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-Four 398Ursula K. Le Guin, The Day before the Revolution