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This dissertation examines the conceptualization of the ideal society in Western culture in relation to changes in communication modes. The utopian discourse is defined by a concern with the relationship between language and reality. I explore this concern as a reflection of the theoretical disposition invited by changes in communication modes, which are perceived as crises of representation. Plato and Thomas More’s enlightened communities in the Republic and Utopia reflect comparable idealistic perspectives on education. In my view, this optimism stems from the social reality of growing literacies with the advent of the alphabet and printing, respectively. I contend that these writers are animated by an ethical impulse to teach their readers that language is representation. From the vantage point of this knowledge, each individual may employ language symbolically in order to create and perpetuate a moral and spiritual mode of thought. I argue that the discourse of the ideal is the symbolic expression of humanity’s engagement with death, the ultimate existential concern made acute by the aspect of historical discontinuity in the crisis of representation. Plato and More exhibit comparable efforts to open to their readers the superior space of critical reflexivity which they themselves inhabit. From this conceptual, pre-representational space of conscious choice, language is subjected to achieving spiritual progress. I introduce the concept of post-utopia, which describes a pragmatic moment when the relationship between author and the ideal society is brought into the foreground and reinforced as a way of addressing concerns with textual authority. I examine these developments in Augustine’s De Civitate Dei, François Rabelais’s episode of the Abbaye de Thélème in Gargantua, and Francis Bacon’s New Atlantis. These authors draw on the ideologies of representation inherent in utopian discourse, and position the authorial figure as link between scriptural teleology and history, ensuring spiritual and societal betterment in the textual cultures of late antiquity and early modernity. The figure of the author emerges as a symbol of history and of man’s ability to assume the limits of the mind and of language.

This dissertation examines the conceptualization of the ideal society in Western culture in relation to changes in communication modes. The utopian discourse is defined by a concern with the relationship between language and reality. I explore this concern as a reflection of the theoretical disposition invited by changes in communication modes, which are perceived as crises of representation. Plato and Thomas More’s enlightened communities in the Republic and Utopia reflect comparable idealistic perspectives on education. In my view, this optimism stems from the social reality of growing literacies with the advent of the alphabet and printing, respectively. I contend that these writers are animated by an ethical impulse to teach their readers that language is representation. From the vantage point of this knowledge, each individual may employ language symbolically in order to create and perpetuate a moral and spiritual mode of thought. I argue that the discourse of the ideal is the symbolic expression of humanity’s engagement with death, the ultimate existential concern made acute by the aspect of historical discontinuity in the crisis of representation. Plato and More exhibit comparable efforts to open to their readers the superior space of critical reflexivity which they themselves inhabit. From this conceptual, pre-representational space of conscious choice, language is subjected to achieving spiritual progress. I introduce the concept of post-utopia, which describes a pragmatic moment when the relationship between author and the ideal society is brought into the foreground and reinforced as a way of addressing concerns with textual authority. I examine these developments in Augustine’s De Civitate Dei, François Rabelais’s episode of the Abbaye de Thélème in Gargantua, and Francis Bacon’s New Atlantis. These authors draw on the ideologies of representation inherent in utopian discourse, and position the authorial figure as link between scriptural teleology and history, ensuring spiritual and societal betterment in the textual cultures of late antiquity and early modernity. The figure of the author emerges as a symbol of history and of man’s ability to assume the limits of the mind and of language.

Complexe et mystérieuse, l’utopie représente sans doute l’une des notions dont la longue carrière dans l’histoire de la pensée et de la culture humaines est incontestable. Compte tenu de cette grande richesse conceptuelle, notre analyse de l’utopie dans la littérature française de l’aube du classicisme à l’aube des Lumières commence par l’esquisse du cadre théorique de l’utopie, à partir du mot lui-Même, des multiples significations qu’il a reçues au long du temps et par la mise en évidence des deux paradigmes qui le caractérisent, à savoir un paradigme théorique et un paradigme littéraire. Tout en suivant l’origine et les métamorphoses du concept d’utopie jusqu’à son évolution vers un genre littéraire particulier, nous nous sommes arrêtée sur un corpus de textes qui témoignent, à notre avis, à la fois de la consécration, de la maturité et de l’élasticité du genre utopique, il s’agit des deux romans de Cyrano de Bergerac, Les États et Empires de la Lune et du Soleil, du roman de Gabriel de Foigny, La Terre australe connue, des Aventures de Télémaque de Fénelon et des trois pièces de Marivaux, L’île des esclaves, L’île de la raison et La Colonie. À la lumière de la signification duale du terme créé par More, à savoir celle de lieu de nulle part (« ou-Topos »), mais aussi celle de lieu de bonheur (« eu-Topos »), nous avons divisé notre étude en deux grandes parties, l’une consacrée à l’analyse de l’espace utopique et l’autre à l’analyse de la société utopique. Plurivalent et hétérogène, l’espace utopique suit, dans chacun des ouvrages analysés, quelques principes généraux tels que l’insularité, l’altérité et l’isolement, tout en prenant, en même temps, des configurations à part, ce qui témoigne à la fois de l’identité particulière de chaque œuvre choisie et du réseau de significations qui se tisse entre elles. L’analyse de la société utopique est elle aussi une source extrêmement riche d’observations et de conclusions et s’appuie sur trois coordonnées majeures : l’altérité de la société utopique, sa nature idéale et sa critique implicite de la société humaine. Derrière ces piliers théoriques, nous retrouvons la description effective de la société utopique, avec le portrait de l’Utopien, le procès de l’homme et de nombreux aspects économiques, politiques et organisationnels qui caractérisent toute communauté. / Complex and mysterious, utopia has undoubtedly been one of the concepts whose long career in the history of human thinking and culture has been undeniable. Having in view this conceptual legacy our analysis of utopia in the French literature from the beginning of Classicism to the beginning of the Enlightment starts with the description of the theoretical background of utopia, with the word, as such, and the various significances that it has received along the time and with the presentation of the two paradigms characterizing it, the theoretical and the literary paradigm. From the origin and the metamorphoses of the concept of utopia down to its evolution towards a literary genre in itself we have approached a corpus of texts that demonstrate once and again the consecration, the maturity and the elasticity of the utopian genre, in the two novels of Cyrano de Bergerac, Les États et Empires de la Lune et du Soleil, the novel of Gabriel de Foigny, La Terre australe connue, the Aventures de Télémaque by Fénelon and the three plays by Marivaux, L’île des esclaves, L’île de la raison et La Colonie. In the light of the dual significance of the term created by More, that of a place of nowhere (« ou-Topos »), but also that of a place of happiness (« eu-Topos »), we have divided the paper into two big parts, one devoted to the analysis of the utopian space and the other to the analysis of the utopian society. Plurivalent and heterogeneous, the utopian space pursues, in every work analyzed, some general principles such as the insularity, the otherness and the isolation, and, at the same time, all of them acquire special configurations which proves both the particular identity of the work chosen and the web of significances that binds them. The analysis of the utopian society is in itself a rich source of observations and conclusions and relies on three major coordinates: the otherness of the utopian society, its ideal nature and its implicit scrutiny of the human society. Behind these theoretical pillars we discover the actual description of the utopian society, with the portrait of the Utopian being, the trial of the human being, and the numerous economic, political and organizational aspects that characterize the entire community.

This study examines three important conceptions of social and human progress, evaluates them critically, and proposes an alternative conception of a rather different type. The first three conceptions are respectively found in, or at least based on, Condorcet’s theory of the historical progress of the sciences and the arts; Adam Smith’s conception of the progressive increase of national wealth; and Karl Marx’s ideal of the communist society. Despite their fundamental differences, these three theories have several common elements. Each one proposes a social project aimed at achieving an ideal society; each ultimately seeks the improvement of the human condition; each focuses however on social rather than human progress, so that its conception of the latter (and of humanness) must be constructed from a set of associated ideas about human nature, life, needs, worth, potential, or fulfilment, and about relations among these.