Unpacking Utopia

English and American literary utopias often use a§travel narrative frame that presents more than a§simple formula for making their fantastic discoveries§and vicarious estrangements seem as credible,§entertaining, and useful to readers as the§real-life adventures and factual accounts of§exploration these fictions have imitated since§Columbus stumbled upon his "new world." What becomes§of utopianism's claims to locate intellectual and§speculative resources for human liberation, communal§perfection, and civilized progress in the cultural§properties of imaginary foreigners once its§literature's productive and restrictive relations to§the imperialist, colonialist, and capitalist§ideologies of so-called Western nations have been§exposed? For literary scholars, cultural §historians, and others interested in studying utopian§fiction's generic construction from the§romanticizations of alienation and exploitation that§empowered 500 years of Anglophone empire-building,§this book offers its deconstructive analyses of§paradoxical utopia's parodies of travel and its§discourses. English and American literary utopias often use a§travel narrative frame that presents more than a§simple formula for making their fantastic discoveries§and vicarious estrangements seem as credible,§entertaining, and useful to readers as the§real-life adventures and factual accounts of§exploration these fictions have imitated since§Columbus stumbled upon his "new world." What becomes§of utopianism''s claims to locate intellectual and§speculative resources for human liberation, communal§perfection, and civilized progress in the cultural§properties of imaginary foreigners once its§literature''s productive and restrictive relations to§the imperialist, colonialist, and capitalist§ideologies of so-called Western nations have been§exposed? For literary scholars, cultural §historians, and others interested in studying utopian§fiction''s generic construction from the§romanticizations of alienation and exploitation that§empowered 500 years of Anglophone empire-building,§this book offers its deconstructive analyses of§paradoxical utopia''s parodies of travel and its§discourses.