The paper analyses Mór Jókai’s The Novel of the Century to Come from the viewpoint of the local aspects of cultural embeddedness of the complex and competing utopian discourses. The whole novel describes a future in which, after difficult struggles, a globally united and perfect society is created. However, two different small-scale utopias are also described; one of them (Otthon) is located in Europe and shows traits of the national-capitalist dream; the other (Kin-Tseu) is imagined to be in Central Asia and presented first from the perspective of Chinese historical sources, in a form similar to a colonialist pornotopia. Then an omniscient narrator proves that the Chinese image of Kin-Tseu is false, and presents it as it “really” is. This latter utopia solicits an eco-critical reading, since its basic problem, i.e. the sustainability of a growing population in a closed environment, is crucial for current ecocriticism. The experimentation with various (including Western and Eastern) utopian traditions function as a unique poetic feature in Jókai’s novel.
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The paper looks at two major representatives of fin-de-siècle utopian fiction, Edward Bellamy’s 1888 Looking Backward 2000–1887, William Morris’s 1890 News from Nowhere, and an earlier work by the Hungarian novelist Mór Jókai, The Novel of the Century to Come (A jövő század regénye, 1872–1874). I examine their various strategies regarding the spatial and historical aspects of utopian transformation as well as their respective positions toward the relation of commerce and community. On the whole, I suggest that the pattern of nationally informed or biased internationalism that seems to underlie all three novels might be traced back to the enlightened concept of patriotic cosmopolitanism.
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