More, Huxley, Eggers, and the Utopian/Dystopian Tradition
Journal: Renaissance and Reformation
Year: 2018

From its inception in Plato’s Republic and revival in Thomas More’s Utopia, the concept of a perfect (or as More originally put it in a qualification often lost, “best”) form of a republic has been dogged by the spectres of hypocrisy, contradiction, and authoritarianism. However, the matter is more complicated than a simple declaration that utopias provide a vehicle for totalitarian fantasy, that totalitarian governments inevitably portray themselves as creating a utopia. While today’s readers,