Perfect Worlds
Utopian Fiction in China and the West
Published on 1. October 2025
448 pages
978-1-040-77608-7 (ISBN)
Description
Perfect Worlds offers an extensive historical analysis of utopian narratives in the Chinese and Euro-American traditions. This comparative study discusses, among other things, More's criticism of Plato, the European orientalist search for utopia in China, Wells's Modern Utopia and his talk with Stalin, Chinese writers constructing their Confucianist utopia, traces of Daoism in Mao Zedong's utopianism and politics and finally the rise of dystopian writing, a negative expression of the utopian impulse, in Europe and America as well as in China.
More details
Language
English
Place of publication
London
United Kingdom
Publishing group
Taylor & Francis Ltd
Target group
Professional and scholarly
College/higher education
File size
11,49 MB
ISBN-13
978-1-040-77608-7 (9781040776087)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions
Book
08/2011
Amsterdam University Press
€89.00
Shipment within 15-20 days
Person
Douwe Fokkema is Professor emeritus of Comparative Literature, Utrecht University, the Netherlands.
Content
Introduction, The Utopia of Thomas More, From Rational Eutopia to Grotesque Dystopia, Interlude: The Island Syndrome from Atlantis to Lanzarote and Penglai, Enlightenment Utopias, Orientalism: European Writers Searching for Utopia in China, Chinese Philosophers and Writers Constructing Their Own Utopias, Small-Scale Socialist Experiments, or "The New Jerusalem in Duodecimo", Chernyshevsky's What Is to Be Done? and Dostoevsky's Dystopian Foresight, When Socialist Utopianism Meets Politics ..., Bellamy's Solidarity and Its Feminist Mirror Image in Herland, Chinese Occidentalism: The Nostalgia for a Utopian Past Gives Way to the Idea of Progress, H. G. Wells and the Modern Utopia, Dystopian Fiction in the Soviet Union, Proletkult, and Socialist-Realist Utopianism, Mao Zedong's Utopian Thought and the Post-Mao Imaginative Response, Utopias, Dystopias, and Their Hybrid Variants in Europe and America since World War I, Concluding Observations, References, Subject Index, Index of Names
