Character and Dystopia

The Last Men

AvAaron S. Rosenfeld

Inbunden, Engelska, 2020

Del i serien Routledge Studies in Twentieth-Century Literature

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Beskrivning

This is the first extended study to specifically focus on character in dystopia. Through the lens of the "last man" figure, Character and Dystopia: The Last Men examines character development in Yevgeny Zamyatin’s We, Anthony Burgess’s A Clockwork Orange, Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go, Fyodor Dostoevsky’s Notes from Underground, George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four, Nathanael West’s A Cool Million, David Mamet’s Glengarry Glen Ross, Octavia Butler’s Parable of the Sower, Lois Lowry’s The Giver, Michel Houellebecq’s Submission, Chan Koonchung’s The Fat Years, and Maggie Shen King’s An Excess Male, showing how in the 20th and 21st centuries dystopian nostalgia shades into reactionary humanism, a last stand mounted in defense of forms of subjectivity no longer supported by modernity. Unlike most work on dystopia that emphasizes dystopia’s politics, this book’s approach grows out of questions of poetics: What are the formal structures by which dystopian character is constructed? How do dystopian characters operate differently than other characters, within texts and upon the reader? What is the relation between this character and other forms of literary character, such as are found in romantic and modernist texts? By reading character as crucial to the dystopian project, the book makes a case for dystopia as a sensitive register of modern anxieties about subjectivity and its portrayal in literary works.

Produktinformation

Utgivningsdatum:2020-09-01
Mått:152 x 229 x 23 mm
Vikt:453 g
Format:Inbunden
Språk:Engelska
Serie:Routledge Studies in Twentieth-Century Literature
Antal sidor:274
Förlag:Taylor & Francis Ltd
ISBN:9780367422752

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Mer om författaren

Aaron Rosenfeld holds a Ph.D. in English Literature from New York University and is Associate Professor of English at Iona College, teaching classes in 20th-century literature.

Innehållsförteckning

1 Introduction: The Last Men in Europe2 The Character of DystopiaThe Language of DespairRealist DystopiaSetting and CharacterSetting as Character3 What We Talk About When We Talk About DystopiaThe Good PlaceAnti-utopianism and Anti-utopiasDystopian NarrativeDystopian LawPost-apocalypseFuture (Im)PerfectSection II De-forming Character4 The Last (Hu)Man(ist)Humanism in CrisisUtopian and Dystopian Humanism and Anti-humanismDystopianism, Naturalism, and ModernismDefensive Forms: Humanism, Anti-humanism, and the Dystopian NovelDystopian HumanismDystopian Anti-humanism5 Anti-Bildungsroman: Dystopia and the End of Character in Zamyatin, Burgess, and IshiguroThe Novel of De-formationAllegories of ProgressDivine Minus: Zamyatin’s Reverse BildungsromanThe Predator’s Progress: Burgess’s Satiric BildungsromanCrimes Against Posthumanity: Ishiguro’s Bildungsroman Incarnate6 Paranoid Plots: Dystopia and the Fantasy of Centrality in Dostoevsky and OrwellRomantic ParanoiaParanoid Poetics"Streets that follow like a tedious argument/ Of insidious intent"Diseased Romanticism: Dostoevsky’s Psychological DystopiaHe Loved Big Brother: Orwell and the Fantasy of PersecutionSection III Dystopian Variations7 American Anti-pastoral: Running Down a Dream in West and MametDystopian DesignWhat Happens to a Dream Deformed?West’s World: Dystopian Picaresque in West’s A Cool MillionUtopian Plots: Dystopian Capitalism in Mamet’s Glengarry Glen Ross8 Romancing the Child: First Teens in Lowry’s The Giver and Butler’s Parable of the SowerFirst TeensNew Worlds for Old DesiresA Family Affair: Romantic Humanism in Lowry’s The GiverOn the Road Again: Anti-romantic Anti-humanism in Butler’s Earthseed9 Epilogue: The Dystopian Real