Dystopian visions on page and screen: 'Imagine a boot…'

Dystopian literature has had many functions: it has registered fears about technology and the effects of modernity upon the human body and soul; it has imagined the potential outcomes of political ideologies and cultural tendencies; it has often touched on the struggle of the individual in the face of oppressive government or institutions. This course will being with a survey of dystopian literature from its earliest expressions in work by authors from Mary Shelley to H G Wells and Aldous Huxley. The first novel to be studied in depth will be George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty Four. We will then consider the work of Margaret Atwood, focusing on her feminist dystopia The Handmaid’s Tale. We will also take some time to consider the aesthetics and visual representation of dystopian landscapes in films including Metropolis, Bladerunner, Children of Men and The Hunger Games.

Our final full length novel will be Dave Eggers’ The Circle, which imagines a future completely owned by a corporation somewhere between Apple and Google. Throughout the course we will be seeking to explore the questions raised by each work but also to explore the nature of the genre: does dystopian literature have the power to change the real world? Is dystopian fiction unnecessarily pessimistic or can it combine utopian elements into its doom-laden landscapes? Why are dystopian fictions so popular at present, especially among YA readers? And, as with any literature course, we will focus on the style and form of each work, examining how each novel speaks to its reader and builds its own world.