• Schindler Kilian Markus

• Schindler Kilian Markus

The early modern period was not only an age of discoveries, in which Europeans became aware of a whole “new world” in the Americas, it was also an age of imagining better worlds – an age of utopian fiction. While the twenty-first century has been rather sceptical about utopian thinking in the face of overwhelming global challenges such as climate change and shortage of resources, the early moderns vividly imagined and desperately hoped for better worlds. They dreamt of worlds in which tyrants and warmongers would be brought to heel, where God would be worshiped purely and without idolatry, and where humanist learning and eloquence would overcome ignorance and superstition. Some of their visions did indeed come true – but the outcome rarely ever met their expectations. When Thomas More coined the term ‘utopia’ in 1516 in order to describe an ideal commonwealth, he captured this fundamental ambivalence of utopian thinking with a characteristic pun: ’utopia’ means ‘good place’ (gr. eu-topos) – but also ‘no place’ (gr. ou-topos). Can perfect worlds and societies ever exist? And what price is to be paid for attempting to bring them into being?

In this lecture, we will consider such questions in utopian prose fiction from Thomas More’s Utopia (1516) over Margaret Cavendish’s Blazing World (1666) and others up to Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels (1726). We will also read drama that engages with utopian ideas, such as William Shakespeare’s Tempest (c. 1611), as well as poetry, e.g. selections from John Milton’s Paradise Lost (1667). Topics to be discussed in more detail include the relationship between utopian writing and other genres and modes of writing such as travel writing and satire, the relationship between utopian writing and early colonialism, or utopian writing as a form of social and political critique and philosophical speculation more generally.

On completion of the lecture, Students will have become familiar with key texts of early modern utopian writing and will be able to situate them in their literary and historical contexts. Students will be able to explain how utopian writing was shaped by – and in turn helped to shape – the major processes of transformation that define the early modern period, ranging from religious reform and political revolutions over geographic discoveries and the beginnings of transatlantic colonialism to visions of social levelling and re-assessments of received gender roles.   

All texts will be available online. Students who prefer reading physical books are encouraged to consult The Norton Anthology of English Literature (9^th edition, vol. 1; or 10^th edition, vols. B and C), which contains many of the texts that will be discussed in this lecture.