Reconfiguring the "other" in late nineteenth-century British utopian literature

UNCG Author/Contributor (non-UNCG co-authors, if there are any, appear on document)
Anita R. Rose (Creator)
Institution
The University of North Carolina at Greensboro (UNCG )
Web Site: http://library.uncg.edu/
Advisor
Robert Langenfeld

Abstract: Work on non-canonicalfin-de-siècle feminist utopian literature to date has focused on discovery and description as seen in the bibliographies of Sargent, Patai. and Suvin. This study examines non-canonical texts alongside canonical texts and moves beyond previous studies by exploring how English utopian writers redefine the cultural "Other" using the discourses of Empire, commerce, and science. Mikhail Bakhtin and Homi Bhabha emphasize the dialogic function of language in constructing and altering cultural boundaries, and their work provides a theoretical base for this study. The writers in this study, Mary Bramston, Elizabeth Burgoyne Corbett, Lady Florence Dixie, Amelia Garland Mears, William Morris, and H. G. Wells, imply that ideal societies will emerge only if nineteenth-century values and conventions are subverted. These writers attempt to put actual, as well as temporal distance between Utopia and fin-de-siècle England.

Additional Information

Publication
Dissertation
Language: English
Date: 1996
Subjects
Utopias in literature
British literature $x History and criticism

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