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A Short History of Utopian Studies

Author(s): Peter Fitting
Source: Science Fiction Studies, Vol. 36, No. 1 (Mar., 2009), pp. 121-131
Published by: SF-TH Inc
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 A SHORT HISTORY OF UTOPIAN STUDIES 121

Peter Fitting

A Short History ofUtopian Studies

Utopian scholarship is in the state of most sciences in the nineteenth century when better
description was the basis of building toward more effective understandings of the
phenomena being studied.?Lyman Tower Sargent, "Three Faces ofUtopianism Revisited"
(3)
1. Introduction. There are evident links between science fiction and Utopia,
although the former term only came into general usage in themiddle of the
twentiethcentury,while "utopia" dates back toMore's classic (although as we
shall see, the term only came to refer to a genre of literature in the nineteenth

century). In the 1950s, such Utopian scholars as Glen Negley and J.Max Patrick
were dismissive of the role of science fiction in Utopian literature, although
Utopian and dystopian currentshave always been importantto science fiction.1By
the 1970s, however, therewas a revival of Utopianwriting inEnglish, particularly
in theUnited States, most of itpublished as science fiction andmuch of itwritten
by sf writers.2

Utopian studies?like Utopia itself?found a new life with the revival of

utopianism in the 1970s?most obviously following the general social upheaval
of the 1960s, which contributed to efforts to understand better radical traditions
and alternative visions, particularly in a US in which the Cold War and
McCarthyism had nearly silenced a generation of activists.3 In fact, the revival of
was in many ways made science fiction, for as non
Utopian writing possible by
realistic fiction, as a genre of fiction that inmany instances was set in or on
imagined worlds and futures, science fiction provided a way to imagine and
describe alternatives to an inadequate present. Today the Utopian project of

finding a differentway of organizing social reality seems more vital than ever,
and to thatend Iwill offerhere a brief review of the constitution and development
of Utopia as a field of study.4
As Lucian Holscher argued in 1990:
The creation of the literary generic concept "utopia" is a complex process which
has until today eluded complete explanation. A reconstruction demands
distinguishing between the formation of the literary genre itself and the adaptation
of the term "Utopie" to it. (7)

Holscher's article "Utopie" is an account of that reconstruction, a

tripartite
"history of the concept" that includes "the history of the literary genre ... the
history of itsuse in ... language and finally thehistory of theoretical reflection on
the concept of Utopia" (1). I am primarily interested in the thirdof those concerns
here.
The firststeps in the development of utopia as a field of study emerged long
before therewas a journal called Utopian Studies or conferences on utopia, in
those instances inwhich the object of study itselfcame to be acknowledged as a
specific genre, rather than as simply part of a larger category such as the
or the novel. There are numerous studies of
"Imaginary Voyage" philosophical

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 122 SCIENCE FICTION STUDIES, VOLUME 36 (2009)

More's Utopia (1516), for instance, but at what moment did commentators
acknowledge itas part of a genre? Similarly, there are numerous studies of the
Imaginary Voyage, but at what point were narratives of the discovery and
description of a Utopian land acknowledged as a specific genre itsown right?
2. Prehistory: The Origins of Utopian Studies. There are some obvious places
to look for acknowledgments of Utopia as a genre, firstof all in introductions and
prefaces toworks thatwe now consider Utopias. In the 36 volumes of the late
eighteenth-century anthology of imaginary voyages edited by Charles-Georges
Thomas Gamier?"Les Voyages imaginaires, Songes, Visions et Romans
cabalistiques" (Imaginary Voyages, Dreams, Visions, and Cabalistic Novels,
1787-89)?the term "utopia" does not appear. Instead, the editor calls Ludvig
Holberg's The Voyage ofNiels Klim to theWorld Underground an "allegory"
(Vol 19, xv); while in the preface to Denis Veiras's 1681 Histoire des
Sevarambes (History of theSevarambes), Gamier labels thatwork an "imaginary
voyage," classing it "among our best philosophical and moral novels"
("Avertissement," vol 5, vii). Veiras's own introduction to his Utopia, however,
begins with an interestingcaution:
Those who have read Plato's or
the Utopia
Republic of Thomas More or
Chancellor Bacon's New Atlantis, which are
in fact nothing more than the

ingenious inventions ["imaginations"] of these authors, may think perhaps that

this account of newly discovered countries, with all their marvels, is of a similar

type ["sont de ce genre"]. (Vol 5, xi; my translation)

Rather than his own work in the lineage of these classic

situating
predecessors, Veiras attempts to distinguish it from that tradition, insisting that,
unlike those "inventions," this account is in fact true, and that itwill fill in the
general lack of knowledge about the "austral lands" (Vol 5, xv). Pointing out that
ithas "all the characteristics of a true story,"Veiras then turns to an explanation
of how he came by the document. Although such cautions are typical of the
period and found inmany imaginary voyages, what is notable here is the situation
of the manuscript three well-known works which we now consider
alongside
fundamental instances of the Utopian canon?a juxtaposition that certainly
suggests an awareness of the similarities of what will come to be called Utopias,
even as Veiras distinguishes thiswork from those earlier texts.
Another way of tracking theemergence of theUtopian as a discrete object can
be found in theexistence of studies of Utopian writing. Lucian Holscher considers
that in France, "Louis Reybaud was one of the first [in 1849] to point out [the]
intellectual relationship of [the socialist movements inFrance and Germany] to
the political novels of Plato, More and others ..." (Holscher 13); Holscher cites
Robert von Mohl's 1845 essay "Die Staats-Romane" (The State Novels) as the
beginning in Germany of the "real study of Utopias within the history of
literature" (14).5 In English, on theother hand, JohnDunlop's History ofFiction
(1814) deals with Utopias, but "under such traditional terms as 'Romance,'
etc. and not as a distinct
'Voyages imaginaires,' grouped together genre"
(Holscher 13).6

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 A SHORT HISTORY OF UTOPIAN STUDIES 123

In his annotated bibliography The Imaginary Voyage inProse Fiction, Philip

Gove discusses a series of articles by James T. Presley in the 1870s thatattempt
to reply to a request for "information about works similar to More's Utopia"
(Gove 75).7 Over a four-year period Presley produced a list of 97 titles, as well
as an elementary classification system that isworth quoting in full:
1. "Utopias" proper; works which describe an ideal state of society, according to
the notions which the author may entertain of what political and social conditions
it is probable or desirable that the human race should hereafter attain to.
2. Those which satirize, under feigned names, themanners, customs, pursuits, and
follies of the age or nation in which the writer lives.
3. Those which pretend to give a somewhat reasonable account of the possible or

probable future state of society or course of historical events, either near at hand
or in remote ages.
4. Those which, merely for the sake of amusement, or sometimes for the purpose
of travestying the wonderful adventures related by actual travelers in remote
regions, profess to recount travels or adventures in imaginary countries or
inaccessible worlds, in which generally the most extravagant fancy runs riot.
(Presley, "Bibliography of Utopias and Imaginary Travels and Histories," qtd. in
Gove 76)

Early in the twentiethcentury,one of the firststudies of utopia inEnglish that

uses the term in its title is Joyce Hertzler's 1923 The History of Utopian
Thought.s Although he considers a number of literaryUtopias, his Preface makes
no mention of literature, continuing the blurring of literary and non-literary
genres, a practice thathas characterized the study of utopia until recently.
This book embodies two related and yet distinct types of sociological endeavor.
It is a study in the history of social thought... and attempts to give an historical
cross-section of representative Utopian thought. But it is also a study in social
idealism, a study in the origin, selection and potency of those social ideas and
ideals that occasionally men conceive, with particular emphasis upon their relation
to social progress. (Hertzler v)

the emphasis on "social Hertzler mixes social

Despite thought," prophets,
dreamers, and Utopian authors and planners rather indiscriminately.He begins his
historical review of "social Utopias" with the "Ethico-Religious Utopians," from
theProphets through Jesus and Augustine, before turning tomore familiar texts
such as Plato's Republic (c.380 BCE) andMore's Utopia, as well as Bacon's New
Atlantis (1626) and Campanella's City of the Sun (1623). Then, after chapters
discussing various Utopian thinkers, including a chapter on the "utopian
socialists" from Morelly to Cabet, St. Simon, Fourier, and Owen, as well as a
brief look at Bellamy and theWells of A Modem Utopia (1905), he turns to "An
Analysis and Critique" of Social Utopias. Here isHertzler's definition:
The very essence of the various Utopias [described here] was the delineation of
the means whereby the writer's vision of social perfection is to be realized. This
spirit of hope expressing itself in definite proposals and stimulating action, we
have called "Utopianism," meaning thereby the role of the conscious human will
in suggesting a trend of development for society, or the unconscious
alignment of
society in conformity with some definite ideal. We may also think of it in its
working out as the realization in life of ideals that prompts men eventually and yet

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 124 SCIENCE FICTION STUDIES, VOLUME 36 (2009)

unconsciously, to make them real; they breathe a spirit which gives hope, and
encourages action. (268)

Another way of tracking the emergence of the Utopian as a genre following

from thepreceding examples lies in thegradual establishment of a Utopian canon.
In addition toPresley's attempt to find "works similar toMore's Utopia" or the
works studied by Hertzler, thisdevelopment manifests itself in thepublication of
anthologies devoted to Utopias, of which thefirst inEnglish is probably Glenn
Negley and J.Max Patrick's 1952 The Quest for Utopia: An Anthology of
Imaginary Societies. Negley and Patrick divide theiranthology into two sections.
The first, "Modem Utopias: 1850-1950," begins with excerpts from Ignatius
Donnelly's Caesar's Column (1890) and ends with H.G. Wells's A Modern
Utopia (1905). After a brief section entitled "Classical Utopias: 900 B.C-200
B.C.," the editors turnto "Utopias from 1500 to 1850," beginning withMore and
continuing throughmost of the classics, and ending with Cabet's A Voyage to
Icaria (1845). There isfinally a short ten-page chapter on "Contemporary Utopian
Thought" followed by a "Utopian fragment"written by a student in 1947.9
3. The 1960s and After. As I stated at the beginning of this overview, the
1960s?particularly in theEnglish-speaking world?saw a vigorous revival in
Utopian writing, and concomitantly, in the study of the genre. Today the study of
utopianism involves a considerable range of scholarly activities, from articles,
books, and bibliographies to the founding of librarycollections, learned societies,
journals, and centers. In 1964, for instance (to cite one of the earliest examples),
Glen Negley (the co-editor of The Quest for Utopia) donated the firstbooks of
what would become theGlen Negley Collection ofUtopian Literature at theDuke
University Library. Lyman Tower Sargent published the first version of his
"Three Faces of Utopianism" in 1967 and thefirst version of his bibliography,
British and American Utopian Literature, in 1979. The firstversion of Darko
Suvin's influential"Estrangement and Cognition" was published in 1972, and his
"Defining theLiteraryGenre ofUtopia" in 1973,while Robert Elliott's influential
The Shape of Utopia was published in 1970. Finally, Carol Farley Kessler's
"Bibliography ofUtopian Fiction by United StatesWomen" was firstpublished
in 1984; an updated version was published in the inaugural issue of Utopian
Studies in 1990. The Society forUtopian Studies was founded in 1975, while its
European counterpart?the Utopian Studies Society?was founded in 1988. There
are also a number of research centers, including theCenter forUtopian Studies
at theUniversity of Bologna, the InterdepartmentalCenter forUtopian Studies at
the University of Lecce, and the Ralahine Centre forUtopian Studies at the
University of Limerick. These are all signs of the emergence of the study of
Utopia as a full-fledged academic field over the past decades.10
As Lyman Tower Sargent has repeatedly pointed out, the studyof utopianism
has been hindered by the "use of a single dimension to explain a multi
dimensional phenomenon" ("Three Faces" 4). Instead, it is important to
distinguish thedifferentuses towhich the concept of theUtopian is put so that it
can be understood and discussed in a more systematic fashion. Sargent stresses

that there are three aspects of utopianism that should be distinguished from one

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 A SHORT HISTORY OF UTOPIAN STUDIES 125

another and clearly defined: the literary (to which could be added other artistic
representations and imaginings of alternatives), the communitarian, and Utopian
social theory ("Three Faces" 4).
Certainly these differentaspects of utopianism seem at times tobe linked, and
one might summarize thatcomplex interrelationshipas theformulation of Utopian
ideas and projects, as well as theirexpression in literatureand attempts to realize
these ideals concretely. Critics have examined, for instance, how much Cabet's
or Fourier's Utopian schemes were realized in theirrespective colonies (Nauvoo,
La Reunion, etc.); or how much this or that literaryutopia is the expression or
manifestation of particular Utopian ideals or theories. But Sargent's tripartite
distinction is an essential step in the renewal and progress of Utopian studies, an
essential part of the clearing of the underbrush inwhat Darko Suvin famously
called a "genological jungle."
The crucial first step in themodern study of utopia was, of course, the
definitional one. Important initial work was undertaken by Darko Suvin and
Lyman Tower Sargent in particular, both of whose definitions were based on a
careful survey of existing definitions. Darko Suvin's formulation is themost
comprehensive in itsreview of earlier definitions, although hemakes no reference
per se to the political features of the utopia; instead he "confine[s] [his]
consideration [to] utopia as a literary genre" (38; emphasis in original). He
defends this decision by arguing that "In the last twentyyears [i.e., since 1953],
at least in literarycriticism and theory, the premise has become acceptable that
utopia is firstof all a literarygenre or fiction" (46). Here is Suvin's definition:
Utopia is the verbal construction of a particular quasi-human community where
sociopolitical institutions, norms, and individual relationships are organized

according to a more perfect principle than in the author's community.... (49)

Sargent basically accepts Suvin's definition (with a few small cavils), but his
"Three Faces" is addressed to the entire field of Utopian studies insofar as itgoes
beyond the literary to clarify and distinguish two other essential areas of the
Utopian: communitarianism and Utopian social theory. Sargent defines
communitarianism in terms of "intentional societies": "A group of five or more
adults and theirchildren, ifany, who come frommore than one nuclear family
and who have chosen to live together to enhance their shared values or for some
other mutually agreed upon purpose" ("Three Faces" 15). This aspect of
utopianism is themost straightforward(although it sets the threshold fora Utopian
community somewhat lower thanwhat we might expect). As Sargent points out,
existing definitions of communitarianism have usually been based on the study
of a specific community, "butmost are too specific to include what we know to
be the range of institutions actually established. They generally assume a
particular model to be the only model" ("Three Faces" 14).Moreover, because
such communities almost always have written rules or are based on
specific
there is usually a connection between them and the literary as
writings, utopia,
Sargent has argued elsewhere.11

Sargent sets the second of his categories?Utopian social theory?within the

history of the idea of progress. Sargent then looks at what he considers themost
important current of early twentieth-centuryUtopian social thought,which he

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 126 SCIENCE FICTION STUDIES, VOLUME 36 (2009)

sums up inHans Vaihinger's "theory of fictions"?that Utopian thought"is a form

of fictive activity" ("Three Faces" 22).12Using thisapproach, Sargent argues that
we can find a defense of the necessity for Utopia in thework of Karl Mannheim
and Frederick Polak in their contention that "our images of the future help to
shape our actual future" (27). Sargent also points out, however, that there are a
number of philosophical and political currents thatcritique the idea of utopianism
(e.g., Karl Popper). Of the three "faces," this seems to be the area thatneeds the
most development.
Sargent's third"face"?the literaryUtopia?brings us back to the area with
which we aremost familiar and certainly, since theUtopian revival, the area that
has attracted the most attention. This is also the most contentious area, since

following thework of Ernst Bloch, the Utopian impulse can seemingly be found
everywhere, including inmost literaryworks. Unfortunately this sometimes leads
scholars tomove from pointing out the Utopian impulse in a particular work to
claiming on thisbasis that thework is a Utopia. The overly loose designation of
works as Utopias is far too common?hence the usefulness, ifnot the necessity,
of clear distinctions and definitions.
Sargent suggests two other areas for study, in the form of some further
clarifications and precisions in defining the literaryUtopia. In thefirst place, he
makes an interestingdistinction (one thathas been virtually ignored) between
what he calls "body" and "city" Utopias. The former are sometimes overlooked
insofar as they are "achieved without human effort," in contrast to the "city
Utopia," which is "the Utopia of human contrivance" ("Three Faces" 10-11).
he attempts to clarify some terminological confusion by distinguishing
Secondly,
between "eutopia," "utopia," "dystopia," and "anti-utopia." The latter two terms
in particular are sometimes used and given a of meanings.
synonymously variety
Here are his definitions:

Utopianism?social dreaming.
Utopia?a non-existent society described in considerable detail and normally
located in time and space.

Eutopia or positive Utopia?a non-existent society described in considerable

detail and located in time and space that the author intended a
normally
contemporaneous reader to view as considerably better than the society inwhich
that reader lived.

Dystopia or negative
Utopia?a non-existent society described in considerable
detail and located in time and space that the author intended a
normally
contemporaneous reader to view as considerably worse than the society inwhich
that reader lived.
satire?a non-existent society described in considerable detail and
Utopian
normally located in time and space that the author intended a contemporaneous
reader to view as a criticism of that contemporary society.
Anti-utopia?a non-existent society described in considerable detail and normally
located in time and space that the author intended a contemporaneous reader to
view as a criticism of utopianism or of some particular eutopia.
Critical non-existent society described in considerable detail and
utopia?a
normally located in time and space that the author intended a contemporaneous
reader to view as better than contemporary society but with difficult problems that

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 A SHORT HISTORY OF UTOPIAN STUDIES 127

the described society may or may not be able to solve and which takes a critical
view of the Utopian genre. ("Three Faces" 9)

4. The Dystopian Turn. While it is the revival of Utopian writing in the 1970s
that led to an equivalent revival in Utopian studies, thefirsthalf of the twentieth
centurywas dominated by what Tom Moylan calls the "literaryutopia's shadow"
(Scraps 111)?the dystopia and the anti-utopia. In this context it is important to
mention not only the renewal of interest in thedystopia in the 1980s (as theworld
became increasingly less Utopian), but also the awareness, among a number of sf
critics writing before the resurgence of Utopian studies, of a strong pessimistic
current in science fiction that reflected a larger resistance to technological
advances and the better future implied in some of the genre's inventions and
visions (a reaction to the new reality of the Soviet Union as much as?in post
war writing?to the consequences of the use of the atom bomb against Japan).
This can be seen in the focus?and the titles?of a number of important studies
of science fiction written before the 1970s: Kingsley Amis's New Maps ofHell
(1960), Chad Walsh's From Utopia toNightmare (1962), and Mark Hillegas's
The Future as Nightmare (1967).
The reexamination of the dystopia and the concept of the "critical dystopia"
has been associated with thework of Raffaella Baccolini and Tom Moylan, who
co-edited an important collection, Dark Horizons: Science Fiction and The
Dystopian Imagination (2003). In his earlier Scraps of theUntainted Sky: Science
Fiction, Utopia, Dystopia (2000), Moylan writes: "Moving beyond the engaged
utopianism of the 1970s and against the fashionable temptation to despair in the
early 1980s, several sfwriters turned to dystopian strategies as a way to come to
termswith thechanging, and enclosing, social reality" (186). He cites Baccolini's
definition of the critical dystopia "as texts that 'maintain a Utopian core' and yet
help 'to deconstruct tradition and reconstruct alternatives'" (188).13
Another area of recent research is the exploration and of Utopian
discovery
literatureand traditionsoutside theChristianWest (which was theprimary focus
of Utopian studies until the 1970s), in conjunction with attempts to understand
utopianism in terms of historical moments and countries. Lyman Tower Sargent's
bibliographical work on English-language Utopias led him to the discovery that
such production was not uniform in the differentEnglish-speaking countries;
from country-specific bibliographies, he has begun to look into the question of
utopianism and national identity.14
Another form of questioning and rethinkingutopia is tobe found in thework
of Fredric Jameson. In a sense, the entire history of Utopian studies flows from
or is built on the linkbetween ideas and theirexpression in literatureas much as
upon attempts to put these ideas into practice. Jameson does not question this
connection; rather,he questions the assumption?if not the conviction?that the
literaryUtopia ismeant to be a representation of what the better society would
look like: "at best Utopia can serve the negative purpose of making us more
aware of our mental and ideological imprisonment ... [and] therefore the best
Utopias are those that fail themost comprehensively" (xiii):
[I]t is a mistake to approach Utopias with positive expectations, as though they
offered visions of happy worlds, spaces of fulfillment and cooperation,

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 128 SCIENCE FICTION STUDIES, VOLUME 36 (2009)

representations which correspond generically to the idyll or the pastoral rather

than the utopia. Indeed, the attempt to establish positive criteria of the desirable

society characterizes liberal political theory from Locke to Rawls, rather than the

diagnostic interventions of the Utopians, which, like those of the great

revolutionaries, always aim at the alleviation and elimination of the sources of

exploitation and suffering, rather than at the composition of blueprints for

bourgeois comfort. (12)

As can be seen from thisbrief sketch, the studyof utopia has flourished in the
last decades of the twentieth century. It has gone well beyond the question of
definitions and the establishment of a canon (or of the study of an author, or new
interpretationsofMore's Utopia or Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four)', italso tries
to understand Utopia's relationships to itsmore negative cousins?dystopia and
anti-utopia?and itasks questions about why theywax and wane, and why they
prosper at particular moments and in particular countries.

NOTES
I would like to thank Lyman Tower Sargent for his advice and encouragement.
1. "The once and often suggestive field of Utopian fantasy has been exploited, perhaps
under the comic-book definition, into a bastard literary device known as 'science fiction.'
This product bears about the same resemblance to Utopian speculation that the tales of
Horatio Alger bore to the economic theories of Adam Smith" (Negley and Patrick 588).
2. There is not space in this essay to examine the specific relationship of these two

genres. Darko Suvin has that, speaking, Utopia is not a genre but the
argued "precisely
sociopolitical subgenre of science fiction. Paradoxically, it can be seen as such only now
that SF has expanded into itsmodern phase, 'looking backward' from its englobing of

Utopia" (61; emphasis in original). Lyman Tower Sargent disagrees, admitting thatwhile
in "the current situation many Utopias are published as science fiction, both historically
and with utopianism treated as here, Utopias are clearly the primary root" ("Three Faces"
11). For more on this debate, see Moylan's Scraps of the Untainted Sky (77).
3.1 will raise the question of the relationship between historical events and literary
later in this essay. For a brief overview of this Utopian revival, see my "'So We All
Utopias
Became Mothers': New Roles forMen in Recent Utopian Fiction." See also Moylan's
Demand the Impossible.
4. In defining a field such as Utopian Studies, there is a very useful precedent in the

July 1999 special issue of SFS on "A History of Science FictionCriticism," particularly
Arthur B. Evans's "The Origins of Science Fiction Criticism: From Kepler toWells" and
"The Tradition of Science Fiction 1926-1980." For
Gary Westfahl's Popular Criticism,
this essay, I have relied on three important contributions to the history of Utopian studies:
Lucian Holscher's "Utopie" (originallypublished inGerman in 1990), Tom Moylan's
Scraps of the Untained Sky (2000), particularly chapter 3, and Lyman Tower Sargent's
essay, "The Three Faces of Utopia" (first published in 1967). See also Peter
pioneering
Stillman's "Recent Studies in the History of Utopian Thought" and Toby Widdicombe's

"Early Histories of Utopian Thought (to 1950)."

...
5. Toby Widdicombe gives the "laurels for writing the first history of utopianism
toHenricus ab Ahlefeld, who in 1704 wrote a dissertation entitled Disputatiophilosophica
de fictis as part of his studies at Christian Albrecht University in Kiel,
rebuspublicis
Germany" (3). This work seems to have had little or no influence and has been dismissed
are aware of its existence?until Widdicombe.
by the few critics who
6. Toby Widdicombe's account of some "Early Histories of Utopian Thought (to
1950)," which covers some similar ground, refers to some of the same works covered by

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 A SHORT HISTORY OF UTOPIAN STUDIES 129

Lucian Holscher's "Utopie." Widdicombe describes his own account as a "review" (and
description) of twenty "early histories of utopianism," rather than a study per se, while
Holscher more explicitly studies the emergence of the concept of utopia as an object of

study in the late-eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

7. Philip Gove's The Imaginary Voyage in Prose Fiction includes an "Annotated
Checklist of 215 Imaginary Voyages from 1700 to 1800," as well as a 185-page "History
of Its Criticism and a Guide for Its Study" which could certainly serve as a model for what
I intend to do here in a few pages. Gove's "History" also includes an extended discussion
of Gamier's anthology.
8. "To my knowledge [this] is the first book that attempts to give an unprejudiced,
systematic treatment of the social Utopia as a whole" (Hertzler v). Hertzler does not seem
to have been aware of Lewis Mumford's The Story of Utopias, published in 1922, the year
before his own study. Widdicombe gives a lengthy description ofMumford's study (17
21), pointing to itsweaknesses. I have accordingly focused here on Hertzler's much less
well known book.
9. As well as a number of forgotten Utopias published between 1850 and 1950, Negley
and Patrick include:

1871: Edward Bulwer-Lytton, The Coming Race

1872: Samuel Butler, Erewhon
1875: Mark Twain, The Curious Republic of Gondour
1887: W.H. Hudson, A Crystal Age
1888: Edward Bellamy, Looking Backward
1890: Ignatius Donnelly, Caesar's Column
Theodore Hertzka, Freiland
William Morris, News From Nowhere
1895: H.G. Wells, The Time Machine
1897: Edward Bellamy, Equality
1898: Paul Adam, Lettres de Malaisie
1903: Daniel Halevy, Histoire des Quatre Ans
1904: Gabriel Tarde, The Underground Man
1905: H.G Wells, A Modern Utopia
1907: Jack London, The Iron Heel
1908: Anatole France, Penguin Island
1909: Mark Twain, Extract from Capt. Stormfield's Visit toHeaven
1914: H.G. Wells, The World Set Free
1923: H.G. Wells, Men Like Gods
1924: Eugene Zamiatin, We
1932: Aldous Huxley, Brave New World

Stephen Leacock, Afternoons in Utopia

1933: James Hilton, Lost Horizon
1942:AustinWright, Islandia
1944: C.S. Lewis, Perelandra
1946: Franz Werfel, Star of the Unborn
1948: Stanton Coblentz, The Sunken World
B.F. Skinner, Walden Two
1949: Robert Graves, Watch the North Wind Rise

George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-four

10. There was, of course, scholarly work in Utopian studies before the 1970s. As
Kenneth Roemer has pointed out, papers on utopia have been presented almost yearly at
the annual meetings of theModern Language Association. See his "Petition for an MLA

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 130 SCIENCE FICTION STUDIES, VOLUME 36 (2009)

Discussion Group in Science Fiction, Utopian, and Fantastic Literature" (internal

document, Modern Language Association, 20 February 1997).
11. See his "Utopian Literature and Communitarian Experiments before Bellamy."
12. Hans Vaihinger was a German who proposed a theory of fiction in
philosopher
termsof the"as if (fromthetitleof his book originallypublished in 1911): while fictions
are not "true," they are useful because they enable us to cope with what would otherwise
be the unmanageable complexity of things.
13. The classic examples would include Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale
(1985) andMarge Piercy'sHe, She and It (1991).
14. This research has been developed in the following articles, all of which have been

pubished in Utopian Studies over the past decade: "Australian Utopian Literature: An
Annotated, Chronological Bibliography, 1667-1999," "Utopian Literature in English
Canada: An Annotated, Chronological Bibliography, 1852-1999," and "Utopianism and
the Creation of New Zealand National Identity."

WORKS CITED AND RECOMMENDED READING (*)

Amis, Kingsley. New Maps of Hell: A Survey of Science Fiction. New York: Harcourt,
1960.
Baccolini, Raffaella, and Tom Moylan, eds. Dark Horizons: Science Fiction and the

Dystopian Imagination. New York: Routledge, 2003.

*Donawerth, Jane L., and Carol A. Kolmerten, eds. Utopian and Science Fiction by
Women: Worlds of Difference. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse UP, 1994.
*Elliott,Robert C. The Shape of Utopia: Studies in a LiteraryGenre. Chicago: U of
Chicago P, 1970.
Evans, Arthur B. "The Origins of Science Fiction Criticism: From Kepler toWells." SFS
26.2 (July1999): 163-86.
Fitting, Peter. "'So We All Became Mothers': New Roles for Men in Recent Utopian
Fiction." SFS 12.2 (July1985): 156-83.
*Fortunati, Vita, and Raymond Trousson, eds. Dictionary of Literary Utopias. Paris:
Honore Champion, 2000.
Gamier, Charles-Georges-Thomas, ed. Voyages imaginaires, Songes, Visions et Romans

cabalistiques. 36 vols. Amsterdam: n.p., 1787-89. Available online at

<http://gallica.bnf.fr/>.
Gove, Philip Babcock. The Imaginary Voyage inProse Fiction. New York: Columbia UP,
1941.
Hertzler, Joyce. The History of Utopian Thought. 1923. New York: Cooper Square, 1965.

Hillegas, Mark. The Future as Nightmare: H.G. Wells and the Anti-Utopians. New York:
OxfordUP, 1967.
Holscher, Lucian. "Utopie." 1990. Trans. Kirsten Petrak. Utopian Studies 7.2 (1996): 1
65.
Jameson, Fredric. Archaeologies of the Future: The Desire Called Utopia and Other
Science Fictions. London: Verso, 2005.
Kessler, Carol Farley. "Bibliography of Utopian Fiction by United States Women, 1836
1988." Utopian Studies 1.1 (1990): 1-58.
*Levitas, Ruth. The Concept of Utopia. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse UP, 1990.

Moylan, Tom. Demand the Impossible: Science Fiction and the Utopian Imagination.
New York: Methuen, 1986.
-. CO:
Scraps of the Untainted Sky: Science Fiction, Utopia, Dystopia. Boulder,
Westview, 2000.

Negley, Glen, and J.Max Patrick, eds. The Quest for Utopia: An Anthology of Imaginary
Societies. New York: Henry Schuman, 1952.

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All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
 A SHORT HISTORY OF UTOPIAN STUDIES 131

*Parrinder, Patrick, ed. Learning from Other Worlds: Estrangement, Cognition, and the
Politics of Science Fiction and Utopia. Liverpool: Liverpool UP, 2000.
*Pordzik, Ralph. The Quest for Postcolonial Utopia: A Comparative Introduction to the

Utopian Novel in the New English Literatures. New York: Peter Lang, 2001.

Sargent, Lyman Tower. British and American Utopian Literature, 1516-1985:An

Annotated, Chronological Bibliography. New York: Garland, 1988.
-. "Three Faces of Utopianism Revisited." Studies 5.1 (1994): 1-37.
Utopian
-. "Australian Utopian Literature: An Annotated, Chronological 1667
Bibliography,
1999." Utopian Studies 10.2 (1999): 138-73.
-. Literature and Communitarian before Bellamy." ATQ 3.1
"Utopian Experiments
(Mar. 1989): 135-46.
-. Literature in English Canada: An Annotated,
"Utopian Chronological
Bibliography, 1852-1999." Utopian Studies 10.2 (1999): 174-206.
-. and theCreation of New Zealand National Studies
"Utopianism Identity." Utopian
12.1 (2001): 1-18.
*Schaer, Roland, Gregory Claeys, and Lyman Tower Sargent, eds. Utopia: The Search for
the Ideal Society in theWestern World. New York: New York Public Library/Oxford
UP, 2000.
Stillman, Peter G. "Recent Studies in the History of Utopian Thought: A Review Essay."
Utopian Studies 1.1 (1990): 103-10.
Suvin, Darko. Metamorphoses of Science Fiction: On The Poetics and History of a
Literary Genre. New Haven: Yale UP, 1979.
Walsh, Chad. From Utopia toNightmare. New York: Harper & Row, 1962.
*
Wegner, Phil. Imaginary Communities: Utopia, theNation, and the Spatial Histories of
Modernity. Berkeley, CA: U of California P, 2002.
Westfahl, Gary. "The Popular Tradition of Science Fiction Criticism, 1926-1980." SFS
26.2 (July 1999): 187-212.
Widdicombe, Richard Toby. "Early Histories of Utopian Thought (to 1950)." Utopian
Studies 3.1(1992): 1-38.

ABSTRACT
This article presents a brief review of the constitution and development of utopia as a field
of study, with an emphasis on the years
preceding its revival in the 1970s. The study
follows a similar trajectory to the one outlined in various articles in the special issue of
SFS devoted to the history of sf criticism (#78, July 1999)?a first of
growing awareness,
all, that there are similarities between certain works which lead to attempts to group
together such works as well as to identify what they have in common and to give this new
genre a name. In the case of utopia, awareness of a new genre can be traced to the
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries as writers imitate More's Utopia (1516), often taking
advantage of the imaginary voyage to imagine alternative societies. Until the nineteenth
century, however, most commentators continued to use such terms as "political,"
or "philosophical" to refer to literary Utopias, and it was
"allegorical," only in the
nineteenth century thatwe can observe the emergence of the term utopia to designate these
works. The next step (in the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries) was to try to
develop a canon of these works, one which, until the 1950s, often explicitly excluded
science fiction. The study of utopia took on new life the upsurge in Utopian
following
writing at the beginning of the 1970s.

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