Appelbaum Robert. Literature and Utopian Politics in Seventeenth-Century England

Cambridge University Press, 2004. - 270 p.Hundreds of writers in the English-speaking world of the seventeenth century imagined alternative ideal societies. Sometimes they did so by exploring fanciful territories, such as theworld in the moon or the nations of the Antipodes; but sometimes they composed serious disquisitions about the here and now, proposing how England or its nascent colonies could be conceived of as an “Oceana,” a New Jerusalem, a “City on a Hill.” Literature and Utopian Politics provides a comprehensive view of the operations of the utopian imagination in England and its nascent colonies from the accession of James VI and I in 1603 to the consolidation of the Restoration under Charles II in the late 1660s. Appealing to social theorists, literary critics, and political and cultural historians, this volume revises prevailing notions of the languages of hope and social dreaming in the making of British modernity during a century of political and intellectual upheaval.
Robert Appelbaum is a post-doctoral Fellow in English at the University of San Diego. His articles have appeared in a number of journals, including Shakespeare Quarterly, Modern Philology, Textual Practice, Prose Studies, and Utopian Studies.