Utopian Geographies

This chapter discusses the geography of utopia, from its earliest literary incarnation on Thomas More’s eponymous island, through the nineteenth-century socialist utopians, to twentieth and twenty-first-century examples of utopian geographies beyond the bounds of utopian fiction. Taking up Oscar Wilde’s ubiquitous contention that ‘a map of the world that does not include Utopia is not even worth glancing at’, it suggests a topographical typology of utopia, one that traces utopia’s entwining with colonial exploration, its more ethereal incarnations, and its potential to shape our ideas about borders, enclaving, and the future. Authors discussed include Toni Morrison, JG Ballard, Ursula Le Guin, Margaret Atwood, Sarah Hall, Islwyn Ffowc Elis, Kim Stanley Robinson, and Jan Morris.