"Utopia is no place". How does the Utopian and dystopian fiction you have studied present the possibility of perfection.

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"Utopia is no place". How does the Utopian and dystopian fiction you have studied present the possibility of perfection.

"It is the dream of a just society, which seems to haunt the human imagination ineradicably and in all ages"1. But "absolute purity, absolute justice, absolute logic and perfection are beyond human achievement"2. Composers such as More, Orwell, Huxley and Atwood use different avenues and techniques to explore this idea of perfection and its feasibility on earth with the human race.

Utopian and dystopian fiction comprises a broad selection of texts; but in the narrowest definition any text in which the composer proposes an ideal or nightmarish world or society. The literary cannons of Utopian and Dystopian fiction include: Plato's Republic, Thomas More and his Utopia - responsible for both the generic name and genre creation; Aldous Huxley's Brave New World; George Orwell's 1984 and Animal Farm; And Marget Atwoods's Hand Maid's Tale. Within each text composers use different presentations of the 'ideal' society to highlight the achievability and desirability of perfection.

Utopia is a story, to be discovered only by trespassing onto an unknown voyage of exploration by Raphael Hythloday, More's fictional protagonist. Utopia is a "prototypical sociological and anthropological study"3 into humanity.
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In book II, More 'records' Raphael's account of life in Utopia as he 'experienced it'. He presents a prescriptive report of social structures of Utopia - contrasting it, in the minds of the responders, with his earlier discussions in Book I of the "sorry state of the realm of England". Utopia ends, first with a rousing flourish by Hythloday in which he claims Utopia to be the most perfect of societies, followed by More's assessment that many Utopian policies are absurd, though there are some he would "like to see adopted in Europe"4.

Utopia sits in ...

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