Title: Founding fictions
First published: 1996
Description: A cultural history of utopian writing in early modern England, Founding Fictions traces the development of the genre from the publication of Thomas More's Utopia (1516) through Aphra Behn's Oroonoko (1688). Amy Boesky sees utopian literature rising alongside new social institutions that helped shape the modern English nation. While utopian fiction explicitly advocates a reorganization of human activity, which appears liberal or progressive, utopias represent reform in self-critical or qualitative ways.

Early modern utopias, Boesky demonstrates, are less blueprints for reform than they are challenges to the very possibility of improvement.
Subjects: Utopias in literature, History and criticism, English prose literature, English prose literature, history and criticism, early modern, 1500-1700
Time periods: Early modern, 1500-1700
LC classification: PR756.U86 B64 1996