Dystopian Fiction East and West

Dystopian Fiction East and West

Author: Erika Gottlieb

Publisher: McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP

Published: 2001

Total Pages: 340

ISBN-13: 9780773522060

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

"Erika Gottlieb explores a selection of about thirty works in the dystopian genre from East and Central Europe between 1920 and 1991 in the USSR and between 1948 and 1989 in Poland, Hungary, and Czechoslovakia.


Perfect Worlds

Perfect Worlds

Author: Douwe Wessel Fokkema

Publisher: Amsterdam University Press

Published: 2011

Total Pages: 449

ISBN-13: 9089643508

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

"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"--P. 4 of cover.


The Orwell Conundrum

The Orwell Conundrum

Author: Erika Gottlieb

Publisher: McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP

Published: 1992-09-15

Total Pages: 327

ISBN-13: 0773591516

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

An important contribution to the understanding of George Orwell's thought, particularly to Nineteen Eighty Four. The author challenges the view of the novel as a flawed work of crushing pessimism, arguing convincingly that it is a great humanist's mature vision of his deeply troubled times.


Utopia Between East and West in Hungarian Literature

Utopia Between East and West in Hungarian Literature

Author: Zsolt Czigányik

Publisher: Springer Nature

Published: 2023-01-01

Total Pages: 258

ISBN-13: 3031092260

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

This book focuses on the most important utopian and dystopian literary texts in nineteenth and twentieth-century Hungarian literature, and therefore widens the scope of the traditionally Anglophone canon. Utopian studies is becoming increasingly interdisciplinary, and this research integrates literary hermeneutics with ideas and methods from political science and the history of ideas. In doing so, it argues that Hungarian utopianism was influenced by the region’s (and Hungarian culture’s) position of permanent liminality between Western and Eastern European patterns of power structures, social and political order. After a thorough methodological introduction, some early modern texts written in Hungary are discussed, while the detailed analyses focus on nineteenth-century texts, written by Bessenyei, Madách, and Jókai, whereas the twentieth century is represented by Karinthy, Babits and Szathmári. In the interpretations the results of contemporary scholarship is applied, particularly the works of Lyman Tower Sargent, Gregory Claeys and Fátima Vieira.


Theology, Religion, and Dystopia

Theology, Religion, and Dystopia

Author: Scott Donahue-Martens

Publisher: Lexington Books

Published: 2022-09-08

Total Pages: 209

ISBN-13: 1978713304

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Dystopia, from the Greek dus and topos “bad place,” is a revelatory genre and concept that has experienced a meteoric rise in popularity at the start of the twenty-first century. This book addresses approaches to the study of dystopia from the academic fields of theology and religious studies. Following a co-written chapter where Scott Donahue-Martens and Brandon Simonson argue that dystopia can be understood as demythologized apocalyptic, ten unique contributions each engage a work of popular culture, such as a book, movie, or television show. Topics across chapters range from the critical function of dystopia, social location and identity, violence, apocalypse and the end of everything, sacrifice, catharsis, and dystopian existentialism. This volume responds to the need for theological and religious reflection on dystopia in a world increasingly threatened by climate change, pandemics, and global war.


Margaret Atwood's Dystopian Fiction

Margaret Atwood's Dystopian Fiction

Author: Sławomir Kuźnicki

Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing

Published: 2017-05-11

Total Pages: 230

ISBN-13: 1443892696

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

This volume details Margaret Atwood’s dystopian novels through the themes of the ambivalent ethics of science and technology, the position of women in the male-dominated world, and the ambiguous role played by religion and spirituality. The book’s unique and original approach places Atwood’s fiction within the contemporary world, with all the problems of our fast-changing reality. Furthermore, it provides an excellent reading of her dystopias in a broader, humanist context, with an emphasis on the social, cultural and political issues that have been important for both her, the writer, and us, the readers.


New Perspectives on Dystopian Fiction in Literature and Other Media

New Perspectives on Dystopian Fiction in Literature and Other Media

Author: Saija Isomaa

Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing

Published: 2020-08-27

Total Pages: 284

ISBN-13: 152755872X

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

This collection of essays examines various forms of dystopian fiction in literature, television, and digital games. It frames the timely trend of dystopian fiction as a thematic field that accommodates several genres from societal dystopia to apocalyptic narratives and climate fiction, many of them examining the hazards of science and technology to human societies and the ecosystem. These are genres of the Anthropocene par excellence, capturing the dilemmas of the human condition in the current, increasingly precarious epoch. The essays offer new interpretations of classical and contemporary works, including the canonised prose of Orwell, Atwood and Cormac McCarthy, modern pop culture classics like Battlestar Galactica, Fallout and Hunger Games, and the work of Johanna Sinisalo, a pioneer of Finnish speculative fiction. From Thomas Pynchon to Watership Down, the volume’s multifaceted approach offers fresh perspectives to those already familiar with existing research, but it is no less accessible for newcomers to the ever-expanding field of dystopian studies.


Self and Subjectivity in the Twentieth Century Dystopian Fiction

Self and Subjectivity in the Twentieth Century Dystopian Fiction

Author: Fatih Öztürk

Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing

Published: 2022-07-18

Total Pages: 149

ISBN-13: 152758609X

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

This book provides the reader with an extensive social, historical, and theoretical background to dystopian fiction so that the underlying reasons for the emergence of the genre in the early 20th century are clarified. It offers a multifaceted approach to the representation of the individual in dystopian fiction by referring to the historical events that have affected the process. The book bases its argument on the theories of such groundbreaking theoreticians as Sigmund Freud, Jacques Lacan, Louis Althusser, and Michel Foucault, and sheds light on how the oppressive governments have employed psychological, linguistic, ideological, and discursive devices to manipulate people and create subjected beings. By including work from a woman author, the book also serves to highlight how the ongoing process is perceived from a feminist stance.


East of West: The Apocalypse Year Two

East of West: The Apocalypse Year Two

Author: Jonathan Hickman

Publisher: Image Comics

Published: 2017-03-28

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9781534300590

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

The oversized prestige collection of the Second Year of The Apocalypse. Collects EAST OF WEST #16-29.


Visions of Dystopia in China’s New Historical Novels

Visions of Dystopia in China’s New Historical Novels

Author: Jeffrey C. Kinkley

Publisher: Columbia University Press

Published: 2014-11-18

Total Pages: 304

ISBN-13: 0231532296

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

The depiction of personal and collective suffering in modern Chinese novels differs significantly from standard Communist accounts and many Eastern and Western historical narratives. Writers such as Yu Hua, Su Tong, Wang Anyi, Mo Yan, Han Shaogong, Ge Fei, Li Rui, and Zhang Wei skew and scramble common conceptions of China's modern development, deploying avant-garde narrative techniques from Latin American and Euro-American modernism to project a surprisingly "un-Chinese" dystopian vision and critical view of human culture and ethics. The epic narratives of modern Chinese fiction make rich use of magical realism, surrealism, and unusual treatments of historical time. Also featuring graphic depictions of sex and violence, as well as dark, raunchy comedy, these novels reflect China's recent history re-presenting the overthrow of the monarchy in the early twentieth century and the resulting chaos of revolution and war; the recurring miseries perpetrated by class warfare during the dictatorship of Mao Zedong; and the social dislocations caused by China's industrialization and rise as a global power. This book casts China's highbrow historical novels from the late 1980s to the first decade of the twenty-first century as a distinctively Chinese contribution to the form of the global dystopian novel and, consequently, to global thinking about the interrelations of utopia and dystopia.