Cormac McCarthy's The Road and Dante's the Inferno contain textual and thematic comparisons. While the Inferno creates a world that exhibits the worst fears of the medieval Catholic subconscious of Dante's time, The Road paints a world of the darkest fears of the current American subconscious. Both texts reflect a critical dystopia that speculates on human spirituality and offers a critique of society through a tour of sin and suffering in a desolate setting.

Abstract This study outlines a reading of Saramago’s novels as tracing a reflective itinerary into history, questioning the modalities informing a contemporary consciousness, thus acknowledging and re–configuring the past. Through an interpretation of these narratives as ‘voyages into the idea of identity’ it is shown that they reveal a symmetrical pattern tracing the Portuguese national saga from its foundation myth in The History of the Siege of Lisbon to contemporary images of identity in The Stone Raft. In light of this, the analysis examines the subversive narrative strategies employed with regard to the interrogation of canonized historical facts that led to the construction of Portuguese cultural memory and identity. Although the discussion is particularly located within Portuguese texts, the issues raised are relevant within the broader context of Western civilization. It is argued that, within his fictional discourse, Saramago aims at a reformulation of the notion of identity, highlighting the importance of preserving and actively affirming one’s individuality. Drawing on the postmodern perspective of pluralism in the reconstruction of the past, this analysis explores the relationship between history, fiction, memory and identity as reflected in the narratives under discussion. The focus will be on the textual nature of historiography as well as on the relative character of memory, aspects suggesting the irretrievable nature of the past and the necessity of using various acts of supplementation, construction and invention when representing it. Furthermore, the dialogue between Saramago’s fictional canvass and the theoretical framework, drawing on the thinking of critics such as Hayden White, David Lowenthal, Tzvetan Todorov, Linda Hutcheon, is intended to situate Saramago’s stance viz–à-viz the truthfulness of historiography within the contemporary preoccupation with the representation and construction of the past with an eye to reflecting present needs.

Associant l’analyse du discours esthétique des auteurs comme Müller, Bond et Barker, à l’étude dramaturgique de leurs réécritures respectives de Shakespeare, cette thèse a pour but de s’interroger sur l’émergence d’une nouvelle forme dramatique – la dystopie théâtrale. En faisant appel à l’instrumentalisation de la catastrophe, à la fois shakespearienne et historique, les dramaturges s’empressent à écrire des pièces qui partagent presque la même vision sur l’avenir du monde et de l’homme. L’apocalypse du roi Lear et la vision cauchemardesque qu’Hamlet porte sur le monde sont greffées, par les dramaturges, sur des tissus dramatiques étayés déjà sur les traces des barbaries du XXe et XXIe siècles. En tant qu'écritures résolument catastrophistes, les « dystopies théâtrales » s’opposent, à première vue, à toute fonction utopique. Néanmoins, le ton apocalyptique (au sens derridien du terme) qui les caractérise, cache des fonctions esthétiques qui questionnent à nouveau la catharsis et la nature même du théâtre. En analysant ces fonctions, nous tentons de démontrer que ces formes dramatiques peuvent être vues aussi comme des dramaturgies censées provoquer l’éveil des consciences et ressusciter ainsi la pulsion utopique que l’Humanité semble avoir perdue. En plus d’une épuration émotionnelle (qui elle-même est remise en question), la dystopie théâtrale est aussi caractérisée par une catharsis inversée, dans le sens d’une surcharge intellective et d’une rétention émotionnelle qui touche souvent le paroxysme. Quel lien entre l’Utopie et la « dystopie théâtrale » ? / This thesis emphasizes the emergence of a new dramaturgical form – the theatrical dystopia. The study analyses the aesthetical discourse of authors such as Heiner Müller, Edward Bond and Howard Barker, as well as their contemporary rewritings of some of Shakespeare’s plays. Through their conceptualization of the Catastrophe, both Shakespearian and historical, these authors seem to have the same vision of the future of the world and the humans. King Lear’s apocalypse and the nightmarish “Hamletian” vision of the world are grafted on modern literary “tissues”, which are already imbued with the traces of the catastrophes from twentieth and the twenty-first century. Theatrical dystopias seem opposed to every utopian function. Nevertheless, le ton apocalyptique (Derrida) which characterizes them hides aesthetical functions, which cast new meanings to the catharsis notion and the nature of the theatre. By analyzing these functions by and large, this study shows that these new dramaturgical forms are to be seen as writings that highlight awareness and resuscitate the utopian impulse that the Humanity seems to have lost. Despite a strong emotional discharge (which also acquires new functions), theatrical dystopias are also characterized by inverse catharsis – a cerebral and emotional retention which often touches paroxysm. What is thus the connection between Utopia and theatrical dystopia?

Cette recherche sur deux romans d'Emile Zola et Michel Houellebecq est conduite dans une perspective comparatiste, en raison des préoccupations communes qui animent les deux écrivains. Les deux romans traitent en des termes diamétralement opposés de l'utopie et de la dystopie, mais l’intérêt pour la science constitue un point de convergence. Au XIXe siècle la science et la technologie ont fait d'énormes progrès. La Troisième République a réaffirmé les valeurs de la liberté, de l’égalité et de la fraternité qui a inspiré les idéaux de la Révolution française ; l’État et la religion ont été séparés en 1905. Mais peu après, à la suite des deux guerres mondiales, le rêve d'établir un monde utopique s’est effondré. Par la suite,le concept utopique a été déformé, et on l’a défini en termes libéraux comme un résultat de la croissance économique. Cent ans après,Houellebecq dénonce l'existence de ce monde utopique rêvé. Pour Houellebecq, le libéralisme est devenu synonyme de violence, d'inégalité et de débauche. Emile Zola et Michel Houellebecq examinent différemment le rôle de la science dans le développement social. Zola, déçu par le rôle de la religion, croit en la réalisation d'un monde meilleur fondé sur le progrès scientifique et technologique. En revanche, Houellebecq s’oppose à l'idée de progrès par la science dans laquelle il voit une forme de destruction de l'humanité. En travaillant sur Travail de Zola et La possibilité d'une île de Houellebecq, nous avons choisi une approche originale qui consiste à analyser la notion du roman utopique/dystopique ainsi que la place de l'utopie et dystopie dans la fiction chez les deux auteurs. / This doctoral research on the works of Emile Zola and Michel Houellebecq is constituted in a comparative perspective because they share common concerns. While both novels deal with diagonally opposite terms of utopia and dystopia, science remains the common link. In the nineteenth century science and technology made huge progress. The rise of the Third Republic reaffirmed the values of liberty, equality, fraternity that inspired the ideals of the French Revolution; also State and religion were separated in 1905. But soon after, with two World Wars the dream of establishing utopia fell apart. Thereafter, the utopian concept was distorted per convenience and it came to be defined in liberal terms as an outcome of the rise of market economy. Hundred years after, Houellebecq denounces the existence of utopian world. For Houellebecq, liberalism has become a synonym of violence, inequality and debauch. Emile Zola and Michel Houellebecq look differently at the role of science in social development. On one hand, Zola disillusioned by the role of religion, believed in the achievement of a better world based on scientific and technological progress. In contrast, Houellebecq opposes the idea of progress through science and advocates it as a mean of destruction of the humanity. In quest to work on the novels Travail of Zola and The possibility of an island of Houellebecq, we’ve selected an original approach that will analyze the poetics of the notion of utopian/dystopian novel and the question of utopia and dystopia in the selected works of both authors.

This research presents a deconstructive analysis of Aldous Huxley’s 1932 novel Brave New World. As a literary work, it is most commonly considered a dystopian visualisation of the future of modern civilisation. This essay reveals a more ambiguous reading of Brave New World by deconstructing and presenting the aspects of the novel which pertain to the classification of the novel as both dystopian and utopian simultaneously. This conclusion of ambiguity is presented to negate any notion that the novel can be classified as a definitive representation of either a utopian or a dystopian portrayal of the future.

Submitted by Aline Batista (alinehb.ufpel@gmail.com) on 2017-06-01T19:23:00Z No. of bitstreams: 2 license_rdf: 0 bytes, checksum: d41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427e (MD5) Dissertação Ânderson Martins Pereira.pdf: 2096376 bytes, checksum: c8d534d84766ab57170b657519498fe1 (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by Aline Batista (alinehb.ufpel@gmail.com) on 2017-06-01T19:34:44Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 2 license_rdf: 0 bytes, checksum: d41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427e (MD5) Dissertação Ânderson Martins Pereira.pdf: 2096376 bytes, checksum: c8d534d84766ab57170b657519498fe1 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2017-06-01T19:34:52Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 2 license_rdf: 0 bytes, checksum: d41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427e (MD5) Dissertação Ânderson Martins Pereira.pdf: 2096376 bytes, checksum: c8d534d84766ab57170b657519498fe1 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2017-02-23 / Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado do Rio Grande do Sul - FAPERGS / Na contemporaneidade, o corpo tem sido largamente discutido e industrializado. As distopias contemporâneas têm tornado mais agudas as problemáticas do corpo em suas narrativas, uma vez que o gênero distopia é extremamente arraigado à sociedade que o concebe, transpondo para a história os temores dessa coletividade de forma pungente e em narrativas que em geral se projetam para o futuro da humanidade. Estabelecida a relação direta entre distopia e sociedade, este trabalho baseia-se na concepção de Eduardo Marks de Marques, na qual existem três vertentes na constituição do gênero. A fase atual ou terceira fase distópica tem sido vigente nos últimos trinta anos e tem por característica elementar a discussão de corpos erigidos a partir de um ideal capitalista de perfeição. Sob esta perspectiva, os romances Divergente (2012), Insurgente (2013) e Convergente (2014), escritos por Veronica Roth, se apropriam de elementos distópicos de obras clássicas. Entre estes elementos pode-se listar o apagamento da história, soros para contenção e identificação social e criação de uma nova sociedade dentro de outra já estabelecida. Neste viés, pretende-se estabelecer uma comparação entre os romances da trilogia Divergente, que se enfocam na transfiguração do corpo, e alguns romances distópicos clássicos que são centradas em uma crítica às políticas sociais. A partir das conexões com estes dois momentos do gênero e também a partir de algumas utopias, este trabalho pretende verificar como elementos sociais são traduzidos na narrativa de Veronica Roth, tendo em vista a troca da problemática política para a do corpo transfigurado. / In the contemporaneity, the body has been widely discussed and industrialized. The contemporary dystopias have made more acute the issues of body in their narratives, since the genre dystopia is extremely ingrained to the society that conceives it by transposing into a story the fears of this collectivity in a pungent way and in narratives that generally project themselves to the future of humankind. Having established the direct relationship between dystopia and society, this work is based on the conception of Eduardo Marks de Marques, in which there are three strands in the constitution of the genre. The present phase or third dystopian turn has been in force for the last thirty years and has, as an elementary characteristic, the discussion of bodies erected from a capitalist ideal of perfection. In this perspective, the novels Divergent (2012), Insurgent (2013) and Convergent (2014), by Veronica Roth, update dystopian elements from classic works. Among the elements there can be enlisted the history erasing, the sera for containment and social identification and the creation of a new society within another already established. In this bias, we seek to establish a comparison between the novels of the Divergent Trilogy, which focuses on the transfiguration of the body, and some classic novels that are centered on a critique of social policies. From the connections with these two moments of the genre and also from another classic utopias, this work aims to verify how social elements are translated in the narrative of Veronica Roth, in view of the exchange of the political problematic for a transfigured body.

The aim of this thesis is to examine the poetics of postmodernism and explore to what extend were the dystopian novels London Fields (1989) by Martin Amis and England, England (1998) by Julian Barnes influenced by this concept. The first part of the work deals with the biographies of the authors, dystopian features of both books and the theory of postmodernism. The second part focuses on practical analyses of both novels. In the second part, the thesis theoretically introduces various concepts of postmodernism and then practically illustrates them on the works.

Il est difficile de ne pas concevoir l’utopie du côté de la rupture : division spatiale originelle, tension temporelle, désaccord critique. Pourtant les théories et attaques des anti-utopistes voient dans l’utopie un monde illusoire voire inutile, clos, signant la fin des temps et potentiellement dangereux pour l’humanité. Et si l’utopie n’était pas le programme de la société meilleure à réaliser, mais bien au contraire une pratique transgressive, une apparition de discontinuité dans notre « ici et maintenant », un excès qui vient doubler le réel plutôt qu’un possible à réaliser dans le futur ?Iain M. Banks est un auteur de science-fiction contemporain original et audacieux, qui, conscient des dangers inhérents à l’utopie, a su jouer avec ces limites pour proposer une société utopique totalement inédite : cette utopie s’appelle la Culture. Comment réinvestir singulièrement l’utopie ? Comment la science-fiction – et plus précisément le genre du space-opéra – permet-elle de mettre en scène des problématiques politiques dignes d’un intérêt philosophique ?Iain M. Banks imagine une utopie tout entière tournée vers la rencontre, la proximité, la nouveauté. Subvertissant les traditions utopique et science-fictionnelle, le Cycle de la Culture est traversé par l’altérité et le conflit. Ces deux caractéristiques sont les fils directeurs de cette thèse qui vise à reconceptualiser l’utopie dans une perspective philosophique, politique et littéraire, en travaillant les représentations du discours utopique au sein du laboratoire science fictionnel.Ce discours prend ici trois formes : dystopie, hétérotopie, (e)utopie. Ensemble, elles dessinent une « culture utopique radicale ». / It is difficult not to conceive utopia as a rupture: through original spatial division, temporal tension, critical discordance. Yet, theories and attacks from anti-utopians consider utopia as an illusory world, even useless, enclosed, marking the end of times and potentially dangerous for humanity. What if utopia was not the programme of a better society to realize,but instead a transgressive practice, an apparition of discontinuity in our « now and here », an excess which overtakes reality rather than a possible that has yet to be realized in the future? Iain M. Banks is a contemporary, original and audacious science-fiction author, who,aware of the inherent dangers of utopia, has known how to challenge these limits in order to provide a completely unique utopian society: this utopia is called the Culture. How to critically reinvest utopia? How can science fiction – and more precisely the genre of space-opera – depict political issues, worthy of philosophical enquiry? Iain M. Banks imagines a space for utopia, entirely oriented towards encounter,proximity, and novelty. Subverting science-fictional and utopian traditions, notions of alterity and conflict span the Culture Cycle. These two characteristics are the guiding principles of this dissertation, which aims at reconceptualizing utopia through a philosophical, political and literary perspective, by way of analysing the representations of utopian discourses within the science-fictional laboratory. These discourses take three shapes: dystopia, heterotopia, (e)utopia. Together, they outline a “radical utopian culture”.

My work is a tribute to the disintegration of built environments, and the chaos and disturbance that it brings into the idea of what a city should look like. An ode to the ruins that are witnesses to destructive social and economic systems and that tell the stories of the life that once inhabited them. A comment and critique on humanities way of ruining everything: world that we live in and our self; a destructive behaviour that we refuse to admit we have, and desperately try to hide. We polish the façades and fake our appearance in order to keep the illusion. I am discussing the concept of ruin romanticism, comparing the garden ruins of the eighteenth century to the urban exploration of abandoned places of modern society, the fascination for what once was, but are no more and the different feelings these places might arouse. I describe how I through experiments with dying, deconstructed screen printing and distressing, manipulate fabrics to create an illusion of brick walls. And how I through experiments with display, sound and light explore solutions for creating the dystopic atmosphere of abandoned places in a textile installation. My biggest inspiration is the inevitable downfallof the urban landscape and I am romanticising the imperfections and the flaws. I take what is understood as ugly by the rules of aesthetics, make it beautiful, and put it on a pedestal.

Works of feminist utopian literature project longing for and predict political change while confronting current social inequities. Often, they effectively interrogate Western models of citizenship and the institutions which reify them, suggesting alternate models. Here, I define Western citizenship as determined by the maintenance of the nation-state through gendered social roles that restrict women to the private sphere and men to the public. This thesis asserts that feminist utopian literature, like politically conscious music, art, and other forms of feminist praxis, is a politically necessary component of feminist consciousness because it facilitates much-needed visions of a more equitable future for all citizens. Here, patriarchy, separatism, socialism, and radical democracy, as well as attendant difficulties in implementation and ramifications for women, will be considered through the following works: Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s Herland, Sally Miller Gearhart’s The Wanderground, Ursula K. LeGuin’s The Dispossessed, Octavia Butler’s Parable of the Sower, and Starhawk’s The Fifth Sacred Thing. The thesis also comments on some of the narrative devices and themes of works discussed, such as nonlinear structure, avoidance of closure, altered states of consciousness, and exile. Analysis of these works relies in part on a growing body of speculative fiction criticism while also considering feminist theories of difference and vision. The thesis concludes with recommendations for utilizing feminist utopian literature as a part of feminist pedagogy.