Table Of ContentUtopian Moments
Textual Moments in the History of
Political Thought
SERIES EDITORS
J. C. Davis, Emeritus Professor of History,
University of East Anglia, UK
John Morrow, Professor of Political Studies,
University of Auckland, New Zealand
Textual Moments provides accessible, fresh, short readings of key texts
in selected fi elds of political thought, encouraging close reading informed by
cutting-edge scholarship. The unique short essay format of the series ensures
that volumes cover a range of texts in roughly chronological order. The essays
in each volume aim to open up a reading of the text and its signifi cance in
the political discourse in question and in the history of political thought more
widely. Key moments in the textual history of a particular genre of political
discourse are made accessible, appealing and instructive to students, scholars
and general readers.
Utopian Moments is the fi rst title in the series. Future volumes will cover
republican, federalist, cosmopolitan and feminist thought, sovereignty, human
rights and more.
Utopian Moments
Reading Utopian Texts
Edited by
Miguel A. Ramiro Avilés and J. C. Davis
B L O O M S B U R Y A C A D E M I C
First published in 2012 by
Bloomsbury Academic
an imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
50 Bedford Square, London WC1B 3DP, UK
and
175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010, USA
Copyright © 2012 Miguel A. Ramiro Avilés and J. C. Davis;
individual chapters © the contributors.
This work is published subject to a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Licence.
You may share this work for non-commercial purposes only, provided you give attribution
to the copyright holder and the publisher. For permission to publish commercial versions
please contact Bloomsbury Academic.
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ISBN 978-1-84966-682-4 (hardback)
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ISBN 978-1-84966-685-5 (ebook)
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Contents
Contributors vii
Acknowledgements xi
Introduction xiii
1 Systemic Remedies for Systemic Ills: The Political
Thought of More’s Utopia 1
by George M. Logan
2 More’s Utopia: Colonialists, Refugees and the Nature of Suffi ciency 8
by Susan Bruce
3 Goodbye to Utopia: Thomas More’s Utopian Conclusion 15
by J. C. Davis
4 So Close, So Far: The Puzzle of Antangil 21
by Nadia Minerva
5 Microcosm, Macrocosm and ‘Practical Science’ in Andreae’s
Christianopolis 27
by Edward Thompson
6 Tommaso Campanella, The City of the Sun and the Protective
Celestial Bodies 34
by Maurizio Cambi
7 ‘A Dark Light’: Spectacle and Secrecy in Francis Bacon’s
New Atlantis 41
by Bronwen Price
8 Gerrard Winstanley’s The Law of Freedom: Context and
Continuity 47
by John Gurney
9 ‘De Te Fabula Narratur’: Oceana and James Harrington’s
Narrative Constitutionalism 53
by J. C. Davis
10 An Island with Potential: Henry Neville’s The Isle of Pines 60
by Gaby Mahlberg
v
vi CONTENTS
11 The Persian Moment in Denis Veiras’s History of the Sevarambians 67
by Cyrus Masroori and John Christian Laursen
12 Nature and Utopia in Morelly’s Code De La Nature 74
by Claudio De Boni
13 Sinapia, A Political Journey to the Antipodes of Spain 80
by Miguel A. Ramiro Avilés
14 Condorcet’s Utopianism: Faith in Science and Reason 86
by K. Steven Vincent
15 Women’s Rights and Women’s Liberation in Charles Fourier’s
Early Writings 92
by Jonathan Beecher
16 A Tale of Two Cities: Robert Owen and the Search for Utopia,
1815–17 99
by Gregory Claeys
17 How to Change the World: Claude-Henri de Rouvroy, comte
de Saint-Simon 106
by Neil McWilliam
18 The Utopian Organization of Work in Icaria 113
by David Leopold
19 The Horror of Strangeness: Edward Bellamy’s Looking Backward 120
by Matthew Beaumont
20 ‘The Incompatibility I Could Not Resolve’: Ambivalence in
H.G. Wells’s A Modern Utopia 127
by Richard Nate
21 Utopian Journeying: Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Dispossessed 133
by Laurence Davis and Peter G. Stillman
Conclusion 140
Suggestions for Further Reading 146
Notes 150
Index 171
Contributors
Matthew Beaumont Senior Lecturer in the Department of English at the
University College London (UCL); author of the books U topia Ltd.: Ideologies
of Social Dreaming in England 1870–1900 and The Spectre of Utopia: Utopian
and Science Fictions at the Fin de Siècle ; editor of Edward Bellamy’s L ooking
Backward for Oxford World Classics.
Jonathan Beecher Professor of History at the University of California, Santa
Cruz; author of the books Charles Fourier: The Visionary and his World and
Victor Considerant and the Rise and Fall of French Romantic Socialism.
Susan Bruce Professor of English and Head of the School of Humanities at
Keele University; editor, T hree Early Modern Utopias: Thomas More: Utopia/
Francis Bacon: New Atlantis/Henry Neville: The Isle of Pines and W illiam
Shakespeare: King Lear ; and, with Valerie Wagner, Fiction and Economy .
Maurizio Cambi Professor of the History of Philosophy at the University of
Salerno; author of the books Il prezzo della perfezione: Diritto reati e pene
nelle utopie dal 1516 al 1630 and I tempi delle città ideali: Saggi su storia e
utopia nella modernità ; editor of the book L’isola degli ermafroditi .
Gregory Claeys Professor of the History of Political Thought at the Department
of History, Royal Holloway, University of London; author of the books
Machinery, Money and the Millennium: From Moral Economy to Socialism,
Citizens and Saints: Politics and Anti-Politics in Early British Socialism,
Thomas Paine: Social and Political Thought and S earching for Utopia: The
History of an Idea ; editor of The Cambridge Companion to Utopian Thought .
J. C. Davis Emeritus Professor of History at the University of East Anglia;
author of the book Utopia and the Ideal Society and the chapter on More’s
Utopia for The Cambridge Companion to Utopian Thought.
Laurence Davis Lecturer in Politics at the National University of Ireland,
Maynooth; editor, with Ruth Kinna, of the book A narchism and Utopianism ,
and, with Peter Stillman, of The New Utopian Politics of Ursula K. Le Guin’s
The Dispossessed .
Claudio De Boni Professor of the History of Political Thought at the University of
Florence (Italy); author of Uguali e felici: Utopie francesi del secondo Settecento.
vii
viii CONTRIBUTORS
John Gurney Visiting Fellow, School of Historical Studies, Newcastle University;
author of Brave Community: the Digger Movement in the English Revolution.
John Christian Laursen Professor of Political Science at the University of
California, Riverside; editor, with Cyrus Masroori, of a new edition of Denis
Veiras’s History of the Sevarambians .
David Leopold University Lecturer in Political Theory, University of Oxford,
and Tutorial Fellow, Mansfi eld College, Oxford; editor of William Morris’s
News From Nowhere ; author of T he Young Karl Marx: German Philosophy,
Modern Politics, and Human Flourishing.
George M. Logan James Cappon Professor of English (Emeritus) at Queen’s
University, Canada, and a Senior Fellow of Massey College in the University
of Toronto; author of T he Meaning of More’s ‘Utopia’; principal editor of the
Cambridge edition of Utopia, and editor of More’s H istory of King Richard
the Third, the third edition of the Norton Critical Edition of Utopia and The
Cambridge Companion to Thomas More; senior editor of the sixteenth-century
section of The Norton Anthology of English Literature.
Gaby Mahlberg Lecturer in Early Modern British History at Northumbria
University; author of H enry Neville and English Republican Culture in the
Seventeenth Century: Dreaming of Another Game; editor, with Peter G. Stillman
and Nat Hardy, of a special issue of Utopian Studies (vol. 17, part 1, 2006) on
Henry Neville’s I sle of Pines.
Cyrus Masroori Associate Professor of Political Science at California State
University, San Marcos; editor, with John Christian Laursen, of a new edition
of Denis Veiras’s History of the Sevarambians.
Neil McWilliam Walter H. Annemberg Professor of Art & Art History at
Duke University; author of Dreams of Happiness: Social Art and the French
Left 1830–1850 .
Nadia Minerva Professor of French at the University of Catania (Italy); author
of U topia e... Amici e Nemici del Genere Utopico nella Letteratura Francese and
Jules Verne aux Confi ns de l’Utopie ; editor of P er una Defi nizione dell’Utopia:
Metodologie e Discipline a Confronto; with R. Baccolini and V. Fortunati,
Viaggi in Utopia; and, with C. Imbroscio, Jules Verne: Mondes Utopiques,
Mondes Fantastiques, Francofonia.
Richard Nate Chair of English Literature and Coordinator of European Studies
at the Catholic University of Eichstaett-Ingolstadt; author of Wissenschaft und
CONTRIBUTORS ix
Literatur im England der frühen Neuzeit, Amerikanische Träume: Die Kultur
der Vereinigten Staaten in der Zeit des New Deal and H erbert G. Wells und die
Krise der modernen Utopie.
Bronwen Price Principal Lecturer in English at Portsmouth University; editor
of Francis Bacon’s New Atlantis: New Interdisciplinary Essays.
Miguel A. Ramiro Avilés Associate Professor of Legal Philosophy at Alcalá
University and member of the ‘Bartolomé de las Casas’ Human Rights Institute
at Carlos III University; author of Utopía y Derecho: El Sistema Jurídico en las
Sociedades Ideales; and editor of A natomía de la Utopía, Las Palabras y el Poder ;
and, with Patricia Cuenca, Los Derechos Humanos: La Utopía de los Excluidos.
Lyman Tower Sargent Professor Emeritus of Political Science at the University
of Missouri-St. Louis; founding editor of Utopian Studies (1990–2004); author
of British and American Utopian Literature, 1516–1985 and Utopianism:
A Very Short Introduction (2010); author, with Lucy Sargisson, of Living in
Utopia (2004).
Peter G. Stillman Professor of Political Science at Vassar College; editor, with
Laurence Davis, of The New Utopian Politics of Ursula K. Le Guin’s The
Dispossessed ; and, with Gaby Mahlberg and Nat Hardy, of a special issue of
Utopian Studies (vol. 17, part 1, 2006) on Henry Neville’s Isle of Pines .
Edward H. Thompson Formerly Senior Research Fellow in Economics, and
Director of the School of American Studies, University of Dundee; editor of
J. V. Andreae: Christianopolis.
K. Steven Vincent Professor of Modern European History at North Carolina
State University; author of the books Pierre-Joseph Proudhon and the Rise
of French Republican Socialism; Between Marxism and Anarchism: Benoît
Malon and French Reformist Socialism , and B enjamin Constant and the Birth
of French Liberalism .
