The Cambridge Companion to Dystopian Literature

Autorentext
Gregory Claeys is Professor Emeritus, Royal Holloway, University of London. He is the author of eleven books and editor or co-editor of some sixty volumes of primary and secondary sources, including The Cambridge Companion to Utopian Literature (Cambridge University Press, 2010), and, most recently, Utopianism for a Dying Planet: Life after Consumerism (Princeton University Press, 2022).

Klappentext

Addressing the full historical range of dystopian writing from the early nineteenth century to the present, this carefully curated collection of essays explores the shaping influence of major authors like George Orwell, Aldous Huxley, and Margaret Atwood alongside a number of rich and important texts by lesser-known and twenty-first-century writers. Chapters explore key themes including dictatorship and totalitarianism, the fear of revolution, anxiety about environmental collapse, misogyny, artificial intelligence and robotics, and imperialism as portrayed in literary dystopias. Focused primarily on the Anglo-American tradition, this Companion also features extensive discussion of European trends in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, as well as a full chapter on non-Western dystopian literature.

Inhalt

Part I. Theories and Themes: 1. Typologies of dystopia I: utopia, anti-utopia, satire, science fiction, dystopia, and dystopian literature Matthew Benjamin Cole; 2. Typologies of dystopia II: narrative trajectories: after the 'critical dystopia' Gregory Claeys; 3. Gender in dystopia: misogyny, misandry, homophobia Anna Bugajska; 4. Race and empire in dystopia Duncan Bell; 5. Politics and unfreedom in dystopian literature Zsolt Czigányik; Part II. Literatures: 6. British and American dystopian fiction of the nineteenth century: themes and generic conventions Justyna Galant; 7. A star is born: H. G. Wells as a dystopian novelist Maxim Shadurski; 8. Hedonism and dystopia: Aldous Huxley's Brave New World (1932) Thomas Horan; 9. The literary dystopia from Katharine Burdekin to Marge Piercy: the 1930s through the Cold War (1990s) Susanna Layh; 10. A genre redefined: misery, noise, and trauma in Nineteen Eighty-Four Nathan Waddell; 11. 'Non-western' dystopian literature Barnita Bagchi; 12. AI, posthumanism, transhumanism and dystopia Leslie J. Fernandez; 13. Corporate totalitarianism, precarity, and surveillance in twenty-first century dystopias Burcu Kay c Akkoyun; 14. Dystopian nature: the literature of environmental apocalypse I: prehistory and early years Marta Komsta; 15. Dystopian nature: the literature of environmental apocalypse II: the twenty-first century Vera Benczik; 16. Dystopia on screen: films and games Simon Spiegel.