Memory and Utopian Agency in Utopian/Dystopian Literature

This book examines utopian/dystopian fiction's enduring preoccupation with memory, asserting through readings of seminal texts that from the nineteenth century onward, memory and forgetting feature as key problematics in the genre as well as vital sources of the utopian impulse.

Carter F. Hanson is Professor of English at Valparaiso University in Valparaiso, Indiana. He is the author of Emigration, Nation, Vocation: The Literature of English Emigration to Canada, 1825-1900 (Michigan State UP, 2009), as well as articles on utopian/dystopian literature and utopianism published in Extrapolation, Science Fiction Studies, Utopian Studies, Children's Literature Association Quarterly, and Lit: Literature Interpretation Theory.

Preface Introduction: Memory, Utopian Theory, Counter-Discourse Chapter One: A Brief History of Memory's Emergence in Utopian Narratives Chapter Two: The Critical Utopia and Collective Memory Chapter Three: Children's/Young Adult Dystopian Fiction and Cultural Amnesia Chapter Four: Margaret Atwood's MaddAddam Trilogy and the Dialectic of Trauma