Thesis (PhD)--Macquarie University, Division of Humanities, Department of English, 2003. / Bibliography: p. 250-270. / Introduction -- Female subjectivity, abjection, and agency in Scenes of clerical life -- A questionable Utopia: Adam Bede -- Dystopia and the frustration of agency in the double Bildungsroman of The mill on the floss -- Abjection and exile in Silas Marner -- Justice and feminist Utopia in Romola -- Radicalism as Utopianism in Felix Holt, the radical -- The pursuit of what is good: Utopian impulses in Middlemarch -- Nationalism and multiculturalism: shaping the future as transformative Utopia in Daniel Deronda. / Within a framework based on Mikhail Bakhtin's dialogism and Julia Kristeva's theory of abjection, this thesis investigates how Utopian impulses are manifested in George Eliot's novels. Eliot's utopianism is presented first by a critique of dystopian elements in society and later by placing such elements in a dialogic relationship with utopian ideas articulated by leading characters. Each novel includes characters who are abjected because they have different ideas from the social norms, and such characters are silenced and expelled because society evaluates these differences in terms of its gender, class and racial prejudices. Dystopia is thus constituted as a resolution of the conflict between individual and society by the imposition of monologic values. Dialogic possibilities are explored by patterned character configurations and by the cultivation of ironical narrators' voices which enfold character focalization within strategic deployment of free indirect discourse. -- Eliot's early works, from Scenes of Clerical Life to Silas Marner, focus their dystopian elements as a critique of a monologic British society intolerant of multiple consciousnesses, and which consigns "other" voices to abjection and thereby precludes social progress by rejecting these "other" voices. In her later novels, from Romola to Daniel Deronda, Eliot presents concrete model utopian societies that foreshadow progressive changes to the depicted, existing society. Such an imagined society incorporates different consciousnesses and hence admits abject characters, who otherwise would have been regarded as merely transgressive, and thus silenced or eliminated. Abjected characters in Eliot's fiction tend also to be utopists, and hence have potential for positively transforming the world. Where they are depicted as gaining agency, they also in actuality or by implication bring about change in society, the nation and the wider world. -- An underlying assumption is that history can be changed for the better, so that utopian ideals can be actualized by means of human agency rather than by attributing teleological processes to supernatural forces. When a protagonist's utopian impulses fail, it is both because of dystopian elements of society and because of individual human weaknesses. In arguably her most utopian works, Romola and Daniel Deronda, Eliot creates ideal protagonists, one of whom remains in the domestic sphere because of gender, and another who is (albeit voluntarily) removed from British society because of his race/class. However, Romola can be seen as envisaging a basis for female advancement to public life, while Daniel Deronda suggests a new world order through a nationalism grounded in multiculturalism and a global utopianism. / Mode of access: World Wide Web. / v, 270 p

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Oregon, 2007. / Typescript. Includes vita and abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 204-214). Also available for download via the World Wide Web; free to University of Oregon users.

Thesis (M. Phil.)--University of Hong Kong, 2002. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 144-147).

Thesis (M.A.)--Brigham Young University. Dept. of English, 2005. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 62-65).

"A thesis submitted to the Graduate Faculty of Georgia Southern University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree Master of Arts." Title from PDF of title page (Georgia Southern University, viewed on May 1, 2010). Richard Flynn, major professor; Caren Town, Joe Pellegrino, committee members. Electronic version approved: December 2009. Includes bibliographical references (p. 62-66).

In Marion Zimmer Bradley's retelling of the Arthurian legends, The Mists of Avalon, she creates two dystopic cultures: Avalon and Camelot. Contrasting Bradley's account of the legends with the traditional version, Sir Thomas Malory's Le Morte d'Arthur, reveals that Bradley's sweeping revisions of the tradition do little to create a feminist ideal. A skeptical questioning of the text's plot and characters with the Women's Movement in mind opens an interpretation of the text as a critique of feminism itself.

by Leong Hang-Tat. / Thesis (M.Phil.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 1999. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 105-110). / Abstracts in English and Chinese. / Introduction --- p.1 / Chapter Chapter One --- The Concepts of Utopia and Dystopia in Literature --- p.7 / Chapter Chapter Two --- The Early H. G. Wells: The Time Machine --- p.30 / Chapter Chapter Three --- From Dystopia to Utopia: Wells's Ambivalence in When the Sleeper Wakes --- p.50 / Chapter Chapter Four --- Utopia and the Scientific World State: A Modern Utopia --- p.68 / Conclusion --- p.91 / Notes --- p.97 / Works Cited --- p.105

by Wing Chi Ki. / Thesis (M.Phil.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 1997. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 177-182). / Abstract --- p.i / Acknowledgements --- p.i v / Table of Contents --- p.v / Abbreviations used for Foucault's Works --- p.vi / Chapter Chapter 1 --- Introduction: Power and Resistance in Foucault --- p.1 / Chapter Chapter 2 --- 1984-The Axis of Power --- p.29 / Chapter Chapter 3 --- Brave New World--The Axis of Sexuality --- p.70 / Chapter Chapter 4 --- The Handmaid's Tale-The Axis of Knowledge --- p.117 / Chapter Chapter 5 --- Conclusion: Resistant Topos´ؤFrom Dystopia to Heterotopia --- p.167 / Works Cited --- p.177 / Bibliography --- p.182

Five "critical" utopias by Quebec women writers ( L'Euguelionne and Le pique-nique sur l'Acropole by Louky Bersianik; Le silence de la Cite and Chroniques du Pays des Meres by Elisabeth Vonarburg and L'Espace du diamant by Esther Rochon) make up the corpus of this thesis which aims to explore how the three novelists exploit the possibilities of this particular form of contemporary utopian writing. For these authors, the transformation of society depends upon the transformation of the individual. We therefore propose to examine the ways in which Bersianik, Vonarburg and Rochon represent, through the experiences of their characters, the social construction of individual identity. For our corpus, this entails a study both of the representations of gender and of the role of language in the construction of identity. We explore gender from a feminist perspective by examining the initial dystopian situation of the individual living in society; we then analyze the positive (i.e. eutopian) process of change undergone by the individual. / This thesis begins by exploring a definition of literary utopia. We then trace the major periods in the history of literary utopia to provide background for our corpus. In chapter two, we examine the ways in which Bersianik, Vonarburg and Rochon denounce, through their fictional representations of the individual, dystopian configurations of gender. In particular, we study various "structural" metaphors used by the authors to interrogate the social role of women and the status of the female body in patriarchal society. In chapter three, we examine the new configurations of social and sexual identity proposed by the authors. We then study the author's treatment of the role of language in the social construction of individual identity in chapter four. After defining "sociolect" and introducing "sexualect", we apply these concepts to the study of the critique of sexist language and discourses of authority in our corpus. In chapter five, we explore how the authors employ discursive strategies, such as parody and "defamiliarization", to alter language and thus inscribe female subjectivity in language (Bersianik and Vonarburg) and to liberate individuals from the imprisonment of authoritarian discourses (Bersianik, Vonarburg and Rochon). Lastly, we find that after having examined the human condition in dystopian societies, our authors propose social projects that are infinitely dynamic and mutable rather than fixed models of an ideal social state.

The thesis deals with the Utopian and dystopian aspects of Ursula K. Le Guin's The Dispossessed and Always Coming Home. To provide a basis for comparison with the endeavours of previous utopists, the first part is devoted to a historical account of literary Utopias, and to an examination of the signposts of the genre. This history is restricted to practical blueprints for the ideal commonwealth and excludes creations of pure fantasy. In tracing Utopian development from Plato to Wells, the influence of historical events and the mainstreams of thought, such as Renaissance humanism, the Reformation, the rising importance of science, the discovery of new lands, the Enlightenment, Locke's Theory of Perfectability, Bentham's utilitarianism, the Industrial Revolution, socialism, the French Revolution, Darwinism, and the conflict between capital and labour is demonstrated. It is also shown how the long-range results of the Russian Revolution and the two world wars shattered all Utopian visions, leading to the emergence of the dystopia, and how the author reversed this negative trend in the second part of the twentieth century. In a study of forms of Utopian presentation, the claim is made that The Dispossessed features the first Utopia that qualifies as a novel: not only does the author break with the genre's tradition of subordinating the characters to the proposal, she also creates the conflict necessary for novelistic structure by juxtaposing her positive societies with negative ones. In part two, the Utopias and dystopias of both books are examined, and their features compared to previous endeavours in the genre. The observation is made that although the author favours anarchism as a political theory, she is more deeply committed to the Chinese philosophy of Taoism, seeing in its ideals the only way to a harmonious and just existence for all. In order to prove her point, Le Guin renders her Utopias less than perfect, placing one society into an inhospitable environment and showing the other as suffering from genetic damage; this suggests that the ideal life does not rest in societal organization or beneficent surroundings, but in the minds of the inhabitants: this frame of mind—if not inherent in a culture—can be achieved by living in accordance with the tao. Lastly, an effort is made to determine the anthropological models upon which Utopian proposals are constructed. The theory is put forth that all non-governed, egalitarian Utopias represent a return to the societal arrangements of early man, when his communities were still small and decentralized, and before occupational specialization began to set in; that all democratic forms of government are taken from the Greek examples, that More's Utopia might well have been modelled on the Athenian clans of the pre-Cleisthenes era, and that the Kesh society of Always Coming Home is based exclusively on the kinship systems of the Pueblo Indians of the American Southwest. / Arts, Faculty of / English, Department of / Graduate