Utopias
and the Millennium
edited by
Krishan Kumar and Stephen Bann
with essays by Louis Marin, J. C. Davis, Louis James, Gregory Claeys,
Krishan Kumar, Vita Fortunati, David Ayers, Jan Relf and John O'Neil
Utopia
has always had a close, though ambivalent, relationship with religious millennialism.
This relationship was probably at its most intense in the seventeenth century,
the time of the Eglish Civil War; in subsequent centuries the two concepts often
pulled against each other without, however, ever fully breaking the tie. Even
when utopia aspired to secularism - as at the time of the French Revolution,
or in nineteenth-century socialism - it continued to turn to millennial forms
to recharge its energies.
The essays
in this book explore aspects of this relationship. Socme investigate the role
of utopianism and millennialism in the debates of the early modern period concerning
human perfectability. Others consider the efforts of the Enlightenment and the
French Revolution to free utopia from its religious entanglement. A number of
contributors reflect upon the apparent failure of the modern Communist utopia,
or note the reappearance of apocalyptic themes in recent fiction and social
theory, while others draw on the contributions of feminism and ecology. As the
twentieth century draws to an end, it seems that utopia and the mellennium are
once more locked in an uneasy embrace.
More books
by Krishan Kumar
From
Post-Industrial to Post-Modern Society: Second Edition
Utopia and Anti-Utopia in
Modern Times
1989 Revolutionary Ideas
& Ideals
Revolution:
The Theory & Practice of a European Idea
Prophecy
& Progress: The Sociology of Industrial & Post-Industrial Society
Dilemmas
of Liberal Democracies: Studies in Fred Hirsch's Social Limits to Growth
The
Rise of Modern Society: Aspects of the Social & Political Development of
the West
Utopianism
Public & Private
in Thought & Practice
The Making of English
National Identity
Back
to Top