Utopian Literature and Science From the Scientific Revolution to Brave New World and Beyond

by Parrinder, Patrick

• ISBN13: 9781137456779
• ISBN10: 1137456779
• eBook ISBN(s): 9781137456786
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2015-08-12
• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• More Book Details
• Purchase Benefits

Summary

Scientific progress is usually seen as a precondition of modern utopias, but science and utopia are frequently at odds. Utopian Literature and Science traces the interactions of sciences such as astronomy, microscopy, genetics and anthropology with 19th- and 20th-century utopian and dystopian writing and modern science fiction. Ranging from Galileo's observations with the telescope to current ideas of the post-human and the human-animal boundary, the author's re-examination of key literary texts brings a fresh perspective to the paradoxes of utopian thinking since Plato. This book is essential reading for teachers and students of literature and science studies, utopian studies, and science fiction studies, as well as students of 19th and early 20th-century literature more generally.

Author Biography

Patrick Parrinder is a leading authority on H.G Wells and his book Shadows of the Future won the 1996 University of California Eaton Award. He is author of Nation and Novel (2006) and General Editor of the ongoing 12-volume Oxford History of the Novel in English. A Fellow of the English Association, he is Emeritus Professor of English at the University of Reading.

Table of Contents

Preface
Acknowledgements
1. Introduction
PART I: SCIENCES OF OBSERVATION AND INTERVENTION
2. Beyond the Telescope: From Astronomy to (Dystopian) Fiction
3. A Sylph under the Microscope: Science and Romance
4. Satanism and Genetics: Haldane's Daedalus and Its Begetters
PART II: THE HUMAN ANIMAL
5. Eugenics, Utopia, Eudemonics: Bellamy, Galton and Morris
6. Strains of the Non-Human: The Coming Race, A Crystal Age, Erewhon
7. Gorilla Warfare: Darwin, Freud, and the Stone Age Romance
8. From Human to Animal: Wells and Kafka
PART III: MODERN UTOPIAS AND POST-HUMAN WORLDS
9. War is Peace: Conscription and Mobilisation in the Modern Utopia
10. Towards the Singularity? Capek's R.U.R. and its Times
11. Olaf Stapledon and the Shape of Things to Come
12. The Expulsion of the Poets
Notes
Bibliography
Index