The objective of this paper was to examine a selection of contemporary utopian texts by David Mitchell, Jeanette Winterson and Kazuo Ishiguro in an effort to understand how their alternative realities might address man’s amalgamation of postmodern identities. In the texts, the human protagonists attempted to cast the pastoral landscapes of their youth as sites of safety and sanctity in order to sustain their modern reality, yet their attempts to return to or embrace the pastoral were a failure in part because of the intrusion of modernity into the spaces and in part because they themselves had become modern entities. The posthumans in these texts, including cyborgs, clones and robo sapiens, were emblematic creatures that served a dual role. They were both the subservient foundation of the utopias in these stories, as well as reflections of the postmodern human condition, which was artificially reliant on religion and consumerism for its modes of identity. Each of these texts yielded one particular voice that embodied and celebrated the postmodern experience and the hybridity that is an innate part of it. These characters functioned as important models of negotiation, providing a constructive bridge to the postmodern future for humanity, whether they worked within the societal systems of their eras in order to seek change or rebelled from society, fighting the classifications that defined their identities. / published_or_final_version / English Studies / Master / Master of Arts

Thesis--Freiburg im Breisgau. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 239-253).

This research is a comparative study of Archaos ou le Jardin étincelant, a utopia written by Christiane Rochefort in 1972, and the triptych The Garden of Delights, by Yeronimus Bosch. The arts critics do not agree on the interpretation of The Garden of Delights, but most see it as a linear story, leading to the human fall. The central panel in this interpretation is viewed as the representation of all possible carnal sins. The Garden of Delights by Bosch is reinterpreted by Rochefort as a utopian work of art instead of a step toward damnation. Bosch, who is well known for his pictorial wit, represented visual plays on words. Rochefort's plays on words and her dialogic use of language are the object of chapter two and three. Her neologisms, and particularly the invention of new names emerge as symptoms of a subversive utopia. Through a comparison of Archaos with canonized utopias (L'Abbaye de Theleme by Rabelais, Gulliver's Travels by Swift) and with new forms of utopias (Le Livre de la cité des dames by Christine de Pisan, Le Nouveau Monde amoureux, by Fourier, Herland by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, utopias by Ursula Le Guin, Joanna Russ and Marge Piercy), I try to define what is common to the feminist utopias of the 1970's and set them aside from the canonic definition of utopia. The idea of freedom depicted by Fourier in his Harmony was precursory of the directions taken by utopia in the works of feminist writers of the 1970's. Fourier was probably the most feminist of the male utopianists. Rochefort presents us with a society where men act more like women, where they create a more anarchic world. Some critics have said that utopia was dead when in fact its interpretation was moving away from a static definition.

Thesis--University of Wisconsin--Madison. / Typescript. Vita. eContent provider-neutral record in process. Description based on print version record.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Wisconsin--Madison, 1982. / Typescript. Vita. eContent provider-neutral record in process. Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 411-424).

No description available.

No description available.

Thèse--Lyons. / Bibliography: p. [823]-830.

Thesis (doctoral)--Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität zu Bonn. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (p. 241-247).

Thesis (doctoral)--Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität zu Bonn. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (p. 241-247).