Unpacking Utopia : Uncustomary Inspections of the Ideological Baggage of Exploration, Empire, and Otherness in Selected English and American Utopian Fictions

ISBN-13: 9783639132328 / Angielski / Miękka / 2009 / 292 str.

Jennifer Nelson

Opis

English and American literary utopias often use atravel narrative frame that presents more than asimple formula for making their fantastic discoveriesand vicarious estrangements seem as credible,entertaining, and useful to readers as thereal-life adventures and factual accounts ofexploration these fictions have imitated sinceColumbus stumbled upon his "new world." What becomesof utopianism''s claims to locate intellectual andspeculative resources for human liberation, communalperfection, and civilized progress in the culturalproperties of imaginary foreigners once itsliterature''s productive and restrictive relations tothe imperialist, colonialist, and capitalistideologies of so-called Western nations have beenexposed? For literary scholars, cultural historians, and others interested in studying utopianfiction''s generic construction from theromanticizations of alienation and exploitation thatempowered 500 years of Anglophone empire-building,this book offers its deconstructive analyses ofparadoxical utopia''s parodies of travel and itsdiscourses.

O autorze

Jennifer Schwenk Nelson, Ph.D.: Completed doctoral studies in
English and American literature at the University of California,
Riverside, with emphases in literary theory and modernism.
Professor at the College of Southern Nevada, Las Vegas: Research
interests include utopian and science fiction, travel literature,
and postcolonial studies.