“Fiction shows Fact the Future”: Amerikanische Utopien des späten 19. Jahrhunderts

Abstract

Recent criticism of utopian literature has tended to regard the utopian novel exclusively as langue removed from its specific historical and social frame reference. Seen purely as a closed system and static image of perfection, it is then usually denounced as a blueprint for totalitarian society. In contrast, this essay includes the utopian novel in a pragmatic theory of fiction. In its double function as “substitute and preparation for action,” fiction (whether utopian or other) cannot be separated from its communicative context. As subjective response to social change it registers the costs of that change; and by converting what is lost into images of ideal society the utopian novel makes it again available for collective action. The essay analyzes ideological structure and pragmatic dimension of utopian novels of the late 19th century in America, especially those of Bellamy, Donnelly and Howells. It then tries to link them to a process of social transformation as well as to changing concepts of fiction and reality.