Perfect worlds : : utopian fiction in China and the West / / Douwe Fokkema.

• VerfasserIn: Fokkema, Douwe Wessel, 1931-
• Place / Publishing House: Amsterdam : : Amsterdam University Press,, 2011.
• Year of Publication: 2011
• Edition: 1st ed.
• Language: English
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (448 pages) :; digital, PDF file(s).
• Notes: Title from publisher's bibliographic system (viewed on 29 Jan 2021).

Perfect Worlds is an extensive, comparative study of utopian narratives in both the East and the West. Douwe Fokkema provides an elegant argument about the human impulse to imagine new and better worlds, astutely observing that the utopian imagination thrives in the context of secularization. Fokkema also tracks the rise of dystopian narratives, invoking authors as diverse as Margaret Atwood and Lao She, and provides a cogent evaluation of the role of imagined worlds in both Chinese and Euro-American fiction. A shrewd comparison of cultures, as well as a vivid account of cross-cultural influence, this volume is a welcome addition to the scholarly discourse on utopias.

Table of Contents

1. Introduction -- 2. The Utopia of Thomas More -- 3. From Rational Eutopia to Grotesque Dystopia -- 4. Interlude: The Island Syndrome from Atlantis to Lanzarote and Penglai --5. Enlightenment Utopias -- 6. Orientalism: European Writers Searching for Utopia in China -- 7. Chinese Philosophers and Writers Constructing Their Own Utopias -- 8. Small-Scale Socialist Experiments, or "The New Jerusalem in Duodecimo" -- 9. Chernyshevsky's What Is to Be Done? and Dostoevsky's Dystopian Foresight -- 10. When Socialist Utopianism Meets Politics -- 11. Bellamy's Solidarity and Its Feminist Mirror Image in Herland --12. Chinese Occidentalism: The Nostalgia for a Utopian Past Gives Way to the Idea of Progress --13. H. G. Wells and the Modern Utopia --14. Dystopian Fiction in the Soviet Union, Proletkult, and Socialist-Realist Utopianism -- 15. Mao Zedong's Utopian Thought and the Post-Mao Imaginative Response -- 16. Utopias, Dystopias, and Their Hybrid Variants in Europe and America since World War I -- 17. Concluding Observations -- References -- Subject Index -- Index of Names.