Utopia

For other uses, see Utopia (disambiguation).

Utopia (Template:Pron-en) is an ideal community or society possessing a perfect socio-politico-legal system. The word was invented by Sir Thomas More for his 1516 book Utopia, describing a fictional island in the Atlantic Ocean. The term has been used to describe both intentional communities that attempted to create an ideal society, and fictional societies portrayed in literature. It has spawned other concepts, most prominently dystopia.

The word comes from the Template:Lang-el, "not", and τόπος, "place". The English homophone Eutopia, derived from the Greek εὖ, "good" or "well", and τόπος, "place", signifies a double meaning.

utopian means u are dumb

List of utopian literature

Pre-20th century

• Plato's Republic (written around 380 BCE) by Plato is one of the earliest conceptions of a utopia.
• The City of God (written 413–426 AD) by Augustine of Hippo, describes an ideal city, the "eternal" Jerusalem, the archetype of all Christian utopias.
• Tao Hua Yuan, (421) is a utopia for Chinese intellects.
• Al-Madina al-Fadila, written by Al-Farabi (874-950), where he theorized an ideal state as in Plato's The Republic. Al-Farabi represented religion as a symbolic rendering of truth, and, like Plato, saw it as the duty of the philosopher to provide guidance to the state.
• Utopia (1516) by Thomas More.
• Christianopolis (1619) by Johann Valentin Andreæ, describes a Christian utopia inhabited by a community of scholar-artisans and run as a democracy.
• The City of the Sun (1623) by Tommaso Campanella depicts a theocratic and egalitarian society.
• New Atlantis (1627) by Francis Bacon.
• Erewhon (1872) by Samuel Butler, constitute a satiric romp through a hidden utopia (with dystopian elements) in the mountains of New Zealand.
• News from Nowhere by William Morris (1892), Shows "Nowhere", a place without politics, a future society based on common ownership and democratic control of the means of production.
• Looking Backward (1888) by Edward Bellamy.
• Gloriana, or the Revolution of 1900 (1890) by Lady Florence Dixie. The female protagonist poses as a man, Hector l'Estrange, is elected to the House of Commons, and wins women the vote. The book ends in the year 1999, with a description of a prosperous and peaceful Britain governed by women.

20th century

• A Modern Utopia (1905) by H. G. Wells
• Islandia (1942), by Austin Tappan Wright, an imaginary island in the Southern Hemisphere, a utopia containing many Arcadian elements, including a policy of isolation from the outside world and a rejection of industrialism. (In a sequel by Mark Saxton (The Islar, 1969), the Islandians develop a modern air force to fend off hostile communist-allied neighbors, and debate whether to join the UN.)
• Walden Two (1948) by B. F. Skinner
• Big Planet (1957), by Jack Vance, depicts a world in which attempts by utopian misfits to set up new societies have gone haywire after many revert to savagery and violence. But one city, Kirstendale, sets up a successful order in which citizens constantly shift their status, titles and duties (from servant to aristocrat and back again) according to an elaborate schedule.
• Island (1962) by Aldous Huxley follows the story of Will Farnaby, a cynical journalist, who shipwrecks on the fictional island of Pala and experiences their unique culture and traditions which create a utopian society.
• Ecotopia: The Notebooks and Reports of William Weston (1975) by Ernest Callenbach, ecological utopia in which the Pacific Northwest has seceded from the union to set up a new society.
• Woman on the Edge of Time (1976) by Marge Piercy, the story of a middle-aged Hispanic woman who has visions of two alternative futures, one utopian and the other dystopian.
• The Probability Broach (1980), by L. Neil Smith, presents both utopian and dystopian views of present day North America, through alternative outcomes of the American War for Independence.
• Always Coming Home (1985), by Ursula K. Le Guin, a combination of fiction and fictional anthropology about a society in California in the distant future.
• The Fifth Sacred Thing(1993), by Starhawk, a post-apocalyptic novel depicting two societies, one a sustainable economy based on social justice, and its neighbor, a militaristic and intolerant theocracy.

References

• Kumar, Krishan (1991) Utopianism (Milton Keynes: Open University Press) ISBN 0-335-15361-5
• Manuel, Frank & Manuel, Fritzie (1979) Utopian Thought in the Western World (Oxford: Blackwell) ISBN 0-674-93185-8
• Hine, Robert V. (1983) California's Utopian Colonies (University of California Press) ISBN 0-520-04885-7
• Kumar, K (1987) Utopia and Anti-utopia in Modern Times (Oxford: Blackwell) ISBN 0-631-16714-5
• Shadurski, Maxim I. (2007) Literary Utopias from More to Huxley: The Issues of Genre Poetics and Semiosphere. Finding an Island (Moscow: URSS) ISBN 978-5-382-00362-7

External links

• The Utopian - Magazine about contemporary politics, art and culture that takes from utopian thought a spirit of free inquiry and open-mindedness
• Utopia - The Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition, 2001
• Society for Utopian Studies - an international, interdisciplinary association devoted to the study of utopianism, with a particular emphasis on literary and experimental utopias.
• History of 15 Finnish utopian settlements in Africa, the Americas, Asia, Australia and Europe.
• Towards Another Utopia of The City Institute of Urban Design, Bremen, Germany
• Utopias - a learning resource from the British Library
• Utopia and Utopianism - an academic journal
• Utopia of the GOOD An essay on Utopias and their nature.
• Review of Ehud Ben ZVI, Ed. (2006). Utopia and Dystopia in Prophetic Literature. Helsinki: The Finish Exegetical Society. A collection of articles on the issue of utopia and dystopia.