Historians of the Enlightenment have studied the period's
substantial advances in world cartography, as well as the decline
of utopia imagined in geographic terms. Literary critics,
meanwhile, have assessed the emerging novel's realism and in
particular the genre's awareness of the wider world beyond Europe.
Jason Pearl unites these lines of inquiry in "Utopian Geographies
and the Early English Novel, " arguing that prose fiction from 1660
to 1740 helped demystify blank spaces on the map and make utopia
available anywhere. This literature incorporated, debunked, and
reformulated utopian conceptions of geography.
Reports of ideal societies have always prompted skepticism, and
it is now common to imagine them in the future, rather than on some
undiscovered island or continent. At precisely the time when novels
began turning from the fabulous settings of romance to the actual
locations described in contemporaneous travel accounts, a number of
writers nevertheless tried to preserve and reconfigure utopia by
giving it new coordinates and parameters.
Margaret Cavendish, Aphra Behn, Daniel Defoe, Jonathan Swift,
and others told of adventurous voyages and extraordinary worlds.
They engaged critically and creatively with the idea of utopia. If
these writers ultimately concede that utopian geographies were
nowhere to be found, they also reimagine the essential ideals as
new forms of interiority and sociability that could be brought back
to England. Questions about geography and utopia drove many of the
formal innovations of the early novel. As this book shows, what
resulted were new ways of representing both world geography and
utopian possibility.
General
Imprint: |
University of Virginia Press
|
Country of origin: |
United States |
Release date: |
October 2014 |
First published: |
October 2014 |
Authors: |
Jason H. Pearl
|
Dimensions: |
235 x 160 x 20mm (L x W x T) |
Format: |
Hardcover - Cloth over boards
|
Pages: |
203 |
ISBN-13: |
978-0-8139-3623-9 |
Categories: |
Books
|
LSN: |
0-8139-3623-3 |
Barcode: |
9780813936239 |
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