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William Morris’s Utopianism

Propaganda, Politics and Prefiguration

  • Book
  • © 2017

Overview

Authors:
  1. Owen Holland

    1. Jesus College, University of Oxford, Oxford, United Kingdom

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  • Advances a new interpretation of William Morris’s utopianism through an analysis of his political writings
  • Examines the relationship between Morris’s utopianism and first-wave feminism, pastoralism, romance revivalism and imperialism
  • Revises the Miguel Abensour and E.P. Thompson’s argument that Morris’s utopian writing should be perceived as anti-political
  • Includes supplementary material: sn.pub/extras

Part of the book series: Palgrave Studies in Utopianism (PASU)

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Table of contents (6 chapters)

  1. Front Matter

    Pages i-xi
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  2. Concerning Politics

    1. Front Matter

      Pages 1-1
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    2. Introduction: No-Where and Now-Here

      • Owen Holland
      Pages 3-28

    3. Twentieth-Century Critical Readings of Morris’s Utopianism

      • Owen Holland
      Pages 29-48

  3. Looking Backward

    1. Front Matter

      Pages 49-49
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    2. At the Crossroads of Socialism and First-Wave Feminism

      • Owen Holland
      Pages 51-103

    3. The Pastoral Structure of Feeling in Morris’s Utopianism

      • Owen Holland
      Pages 105-180

    4. Imperialism, Colonialism and Internationalism

      • Owen Holland
      Pages 181-248

    5. Where Are We Now?

      • Owen Holland
      Pages 249-270

  4. Back Matter

    Pages 271-337
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Keywords

About this book

This book offers a new interpretation of William Morris’s utopianism as a strategic extension of his political writing. Morris’s utopian writing, alongside his journalism and public lectures, constituted part of a sustained counter-hegemonic project that intervened both into the life-world of the fin de siècle socialist movement, as well as the dominant literary cultures of his day. Owen Holland demonstrates this by placing Morris in conversation with writers of first-wave feminism, nineteenth-century pastoralists, as well as the romance revivalists and imperialists of the 1880s. In doing so, he revises E.P. Thompson’s and Miguel Abensour’s argument that Morris’s utopian writing should be conceived as anti-political and heuristic, concerned with the pedagogic education of desire, rather than with the more mundane work of propaganda. He shows how Morris’s utopianism emerged against the grain of the now-here, embroiled in instrumental, propagandistic polemic, complicating Thompson’sand Abensour’s view of its anti-political character.

Authors and Affiliations

  • Jesus College, University of Oxford, Oxford, United Kingdom

    Owen Holland

About the author

Owen Holland is Career Development Fellow in Victorian and Modern Literature at Jesus College, Oxford, UK. He is also editor of The Journal of William Morris Studies.

Bibliographic Information

  • Book Title: William Morris’s Utopianism

  • Book Subtitle: Propaganda, Politics and Prefiguration

  • Authors: Owen Holland

  • Series Title: Palgrave Studies in Utopianism

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-59602-0

  • Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan Cham

  • eBook Packages: History, History (R0)

  • Copyright Information: The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2017

  • Hardcover ISBN: 978-3-319-59601-3Published: 18 December 2017

  • Softcover ISBN: 978-3-319-86661-1Published: 30 August 2018

  • eBook ISBN: 978-3-319-59602-0Published: 04 December 2017

  • Series ISSN: 2946-4471

  • Series E-ISSN: 2946-448X

  • Edition Number: 1

  • Number of Pages: XI, 337

  • Number of Illustrations: 5 b/w illustrations

  • Topics: History of Britain and Ireland, History of Modern Europe, Cultural History, Intellectual Studies, Political History

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