Requirements. This is a seminar class, built around reading and class discussion. The single most important requirement — on which the bulk of the grade will be based — is that you attend class and come prepared to take part in the discussion. A short final paper will be required at the end of the term, due on December 4 — with a one-paragraph “abstract” required the week before.The Reading. The reading list will be revised and supplemented as we progress through the history and the discussion of our enquiry. Supplemental reading, much of it drawn from The Utopia Reader (edited by Claeys and Sargent; NYU Press, 1996) and the required Norton editions, will be assigned week to week.
Some Recommended Texts
John Gray, Black Mass: Apocalyptic Religion and The Death of Utopia (Farrar Straus Giroux, 2007) Russell Jacoby, Future Imperfect: Utopia Thought for an Anti-Utopian Age (Columbia, 2005) Lewis Mumford, The Story of Utopias (Viking, 1962 [1922])
Required Reading List — A Sketch
November 5, 2007
Thomas More, Utopia (Norton, 1992 [1516])
November 6
Thomas More, Utopia (Norton, 1992 [1516])
Ovid, “The Golden Age,” in Utopia, “Backgrounds”
“The Acts of the Apostles,” in Utopia, “Backgrounds”
Lucian of Samosata, “Saturn’s Age,” in Utopia
St. Ambrose, “Naboth’s Vineyard,” in Utopia
St. Benedict, “Monastic Rules,” in Utopia
“Cockayne,” in Utopia
Tasso, Chorus from Aminta in Utopia
Amerigo Vespucci, “The First Voyage,” in Utopia
More, Giles, Erasmus et al, “Humanist Letters,” in Utopia
November 12
Plato, The Republic (Basic, 1991 [c. 360 BC])
Allan Bloom, “Preface” and “Interpretive Essay” in The Republic
November 13
Plato, The Republic (Basic, 1991 [c. 360 BC])
Hesiod, Works and Days in The Utopia Reader
Ovid, Metamorphosis
Vergil, Fourth Eclogue
“The Garden of Eden,” Genesis
Pindar, Fragments
Horace, “Epode 16″
“The Land of Prester John”
Solon, “Elegy and Iambus”
Lycurgus, “Laws” (from Plutarch’s Lives)
Aristophanes, Ecclesiasusae
Isaiah,
Iambulus, Heliopolis
Lucian, Saturnalia
The Revelation of St. John
Baruch, The Apocalypse
St. Benedict, “The Rule of St. Benedict”
St. Francis, “The Rule of St. Francis”
Telecleides, “The Cockaigne”
“The Land of Cockaigne”
Rabelais, from The Life of Gargantua
Montaigne, “Of the Cannibals”
November 19
Francis Bacon, “New Atlantis” (1627) in Three Early Modern Utopias (Oxford, 1999)
November 20
Henry Neville, “The Isle of Pines,” (1668) in Three Early Modern Utopias (Oxford, 1999)
November 26
Edmund Wilson, To the Finland Station (New York Review Books, 2003 [1940])
November 27
Edmund Wilson, To the Finland Station (New York Review Books, 2003 [1940])
December 3
Marx & Engels, The Communist Manifesto
December 4
Dostoevsky, Notes From Underground (Norton, 2001 [1863])
December 10
Charles Nordhoff, American Utopias (Berkshire House, 1993 [1875])
December 11
Charles Nordhoff, American Utopias (Berkshire House, 1993 [1875])
December 17
Edward Bellamy, Looking Backward (Oxford, 2007 [1887])
December 18
William Morris, News From Nowhere (Penguin, 1994 [1890])
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