Description

Writers have created fictions of social per­fection at least since Plato’s Republic. Sir Thomas More gave this thread of intel­lectual history a name when he called his contribution to it Utopia, Greek for noplace.

With each subsequent author cog­nizant of his predecessors and subject to altered real-world conditions which sug­gest ever-new causes for hope and alarm, “no place” changed. The fourteen essays presented in this book critically assess man’s fascination with and seeking for “no place.”

“In discussing these central fictions, the contributors see ‘no place’ from di­verse perspectives: the sociological, the psychological, the political, the aesthetic. In revealing the roots of these works, the contributors cast back along the whole length of utopian thought. Each essay stands alone; together, the essays make clear what ‘no place’ means today. While it may be true that ‘no place’ has always seemed elsewhere or elsewhen, in fact all utopian fiction whirls contemporary ac­tors through a costume dance no place else but here.”—from the Preface

The contributors are Eric S. Rabkin, B. G. Knepper, Thomas J.Remington, Gorman Beauchamp, William Matter, Ken Davis, Kenneth M. Roemer, Wil­liam Steinhoff, Howard Segal, Jack Zipes, Kathleen Woodward, Merritt Abrash, and James W. Bittner.

About the Author

Eric S. Rabkin is Professor of English and Associate Dean for Long Range Planning at the University of Michigan. He is a fiction writer and widely published critic.

Martin H. Greenberg is Professor of Regional Analysis and Political Sci­ence at the University of Wisconsin, Green Bay.

Joseph D. Olander is Professor of English and Vice-President for Aca­demic Affairs at the University of Texas, El Paso.