The Concept Of Utopia

Press, Volume CVIII, Issue 31862, 14 December 1968, Page 4

The Concept Of Utopia

Utopias In Literature Since the Romantic Period. By J. C. Garrett University of Canterbury. 63 pp. In this book, Professor Garrett traces the development of the concept of Utopia, examining the treatment of it in writers from Blake’s time to the present day. He contends that, while earlier writers were content in their Utopias to describe the world as it ought to be (as opposed to the world as it is). Romantic writers intended their Utopias as a spur to action. Men formed Utopian schemes such as Coleridge’s and Southey’s Pantisocracy in actual life. They wished to return to earlier, simpler modes of living. Most Victorians believed in the certainty of progress through science, and looked forward to an era in which expertise would replace drudgery, although some suspected that the use of machines might rob men of feeling and creative instinct. With the twentieth century has come a flood of Utopian

literature, because of the wide range of possibilities laid before men by Socialist doctrine and scientific advance. Some writers have postulated Utopias based on the evolution of the human species. Most of these must be rejected as ideal human states, for we cannot recognise our kinship with the evolved creatures. Wells described the benefits of scientific Utopias, but the regimentation of the individual he depicted fired many other writers to produce antiUtopias, such as Huxley’s “Brave New World.” The concept of Utopia itself repelled such writers, who saw that if anxiety is removed, so is almost everything which makes life worth living. Professor Garrett shows that the wandering Utopian romance has gradually changed into a novel, because the paradoxes now seen to be evident in the concept of Utopia demand dramatic treatment. This series of Macmillan Brown lectures is clearly written, and will interest all intellectuallyadventurous people. I