Utopia in literature: dreaming or testing the dream?

The premise of this talk is that literature can both represent an ideal world and put an author’s invention to the test by offering up their words to the reader’s critical eye. Without this internal critique, a well-established hallmark of modern literature and poetry, utopia runs the risk of being no more than an idealized portrayal of the world, easily dismantled by reality. Without claiming to be exhaustive, we will discuss historical literary works by the likes of Thomas More, Jean Giono, Yves Bonnefoy and others.

With
Patrick Werly
Senior Lecturer at the Institute of Comparative Literature, University of Strasbourg