The Good Place: Comparative Perspectives on Utopia - Proceedings of Synapsis: European School of Comparative Studies XI (New Comparative Criticism)

Mussgnug, Florian; Reza, Matthew (eds.)

ISBN 10: 3034318197 / ISBN 13: 9783034318198

Published by Peter Lang, Bern, 2014

About this Item

Paperback in like new condition. New shop stock with minor shelf wear, no faults. TA.

Seller Inventory # 527076

Bibliographic Details

• Title: The Good Place: Comparative Perspectives on Utopia - Proceedings of Synapsis: European School of Comparative Studies XI (New Comparative Criticism)
• Publisher: Peter Lang, Bern
• Publication Date: 2014
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 3034318197
• ISBN 13: 9783034318198
• Binding: Paperback
• Condition: New
• Book Type: Used
• Seller catalogs:
  • Literature

About this title

Synopsis

Utopian literature provides a compelling vision of epistemological and moral clarity: a dream of harmony and justice. But in an age of surveillance, utopia is also the nightmare of a perfectly controlled, sealed and monitored world that leaves no room for ambivalence or discretion. In The Good Place, leading scholars of comparative literature explore this tension and examine the richness and diversity of utopian writing, from the genre’s earliest manifestations to the present. Utopia is seen as a tenacious force of the human imagination: a desire for renewal that manifests itself in the tension between social reality and the virtual worlds of unlived possibility. Notable for its engagement with a wide range of texts from different periods and national traditions, this book invites the reader to rethink ‘the good place’ from the specific perspective of literary studies and suggests that utopia, in the realm of fiction, is more than just a philosophical abstraction. Mediated by the experience of authors, characters and readers, utopian literature offers a transient but genuine experience of perfection, beyond the horizon of everyday lived experience.

About the Author

Florian Mussgnug is Reader in Italian and Comparative Literature and director of the graduate programme in comparative literature at University College London.
Matthew Reza is an Italian language tutor at the University of Oxford and the events coordinator for the research network Italian Studies at Oxford.