IMAGINATIONS OF AN ALTERNATIVE WORLD: Social Hope Before Marx!

Description

In every era, in every society, exists myths, folklores, legends, rituals, or other imaginative forms which testify to the presence of a persistent human urge to transcend the given material conditions of life. Some of these folk and literary forms drawn from European cultural history are the subject of this book. It examines at length a number of major traditions which go back to Greek antiquity and demonstrates how the salient features of these primitive and primitivistic forms were subsumed and radically transformed in the 16th century into a new form of literary fiction by Thomas More’s Utopia. In the 18th century, the utopian imagination found a unique expression in the work of William Blake. A detailed study of his millenarian interpretation of the events of the French Revolution forms part of the book.

Dr. Javed Malick is a retired academic. He taught English at a Delhi University College. He is also a theatre scholar with several publications to his credit. His other book is Diverse Pursuits: Essays on Drama and Theatre (Aakar, 2020; Routledge, 2021).