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Proquest Dissertations NOTE TO USERS This reproduction is the best copy available. UMI® u Ottawa L'Universit6 canadienne Canada's university FACULTE DES ETUDES SUPERIEURES t==J FACULTY OF GRADUATE AND ET POSTDOCTORALES U Ottawa POSTDOCTORAL STUDIES I.'Universiie oiinariienne Canada's university Elena Ilina AUTEUR DE LA THESE / AUTHOR OF THESIS Ph.D. (English Literature) GRADE/DEGREE Department of English FACULTE, ECOLE, DEPARTEMENT / FACULTY, SCHOOL, DEPARTMENT Criticism by Genre: The Menippean Tradition in British Dystopian Fiction (Erewhon and Brave New World) TITRE DE LA THESE / TITLE OF THESIS D. Childs DIRECTEUR (DIRECTRICE) DE LA THESE / THESIS SUPERVISOR CO-DIRECTEUR (CO-DIRECTRICE) DE LA THESE / THESIS CO-SUPERVISOR EXAMINATEURS (EXAMINATRICES) DE LA THESE/THESIS EXAMINERS F. De Bruyn B. Greenspan D. Manganiello K. Wilson Gary W. Slater Le Doyen de la Faculte des etudes superieures et postdoctorales / Dean of the Faculty of Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies Criticism by Genre: The Menippean Tradition in British Dystopian Fiction {Erewhon and Brave New World) By Elena Ilina, B. A. (Hons), M.A. Thesis submitted to the Faculty of Graduate and Postgraduate Studies in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy at the University of Ottawa University of Ottawa Copyright by Elena Ilina, Ottawa, Canada, 2009 Library and Archives Bibliotheque et 1*1 Canada Archives Canada Published Heritage Direction du Branch Patrimoine de I'edition 395 Wellington Street 395, rue Wellington Ottawa ON K1A 0N4 Ottawa ON K1A 0N4 Canada Canada Your file Votre reference ISBN: 978-0-494-59520-6 Our file Notre reference ISBN: 978-0-494-59520-6 NOTICE: AVIS: The author has granted a non­ L'auteur a accorde une licence non exclusive exclusive license allowing Library and permettant a la Bibliotheque et Archives Archives Canada to reproduce, Canada de reproduce, publier, archiver, publish, archive, preserve, conserve, sauvegarder, conserver, transmettre au public communicate to the public by par telecommunication ou par I'lntemet, preter, telecommunication or on the Internet, distribuer et vendre des theses partout dans le loan, distribute and sell theses monde, a des fins commerciales ou autres, sur worldwide, for commercial or non­ support microforme, papier, electronique et/ou commercial purposes, in microform, autres formats. paper, electronic and/or any other formats. The author retains copyright L'auteur conserve la propriete du droit d'auteur ownership and moral rights in this et des droits moraux qui protege cette these. Ni thesis. Neither the thesis nor la these ni des extraits substantiels de celle-ci substantial extracts from it may be ne doivent etre imprimes ou autrement printed or otherwise reproduced reproduits sans son autorisation. without the author's permission. In compliance with the Canadian Conformement a la loi canadienne sur la Privacy Act some supporting forms protection de la vie privee, quelques may have been removed from this formulaires secondaires ont ete enleves de thesis. cette these. While these forms may be included Bien que ces formulaires aient inclus dans in the document page count, their la pagination, il n'y aura aucun contenu removal does not represent any loss manquant. of content from the thesis. 1*1 Canada 11 There can be no question ... of a 'definitive' interpretation . .Criticism is always a dialogue between the writer and his readers at one point in time .... The purpose of criticism must be to illuminate the possibilities and the rewards of this dialogue; to keep it alive by the very recognition, if need be, that the critic is more ephemeral than the authors whom he chooses to serve; that he is one link in a long and unfolding chain which their living influence becomes. A critic may hope, of course, that a reader will find much in what he says to agree with; but to stimulate a personal response measured against his own, to stimulate excited disagreement if need be, is one of the legitimate functions he can claim. (Dyson, Crazy Fabric xii) Ill ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would like to thank the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council whose generous grant allowed me to focus on this work. In this connection, I owe a special debt to Dr. Keith Wilson whose painstaking attention to my SSHRC proposal won me this Award. I would also like to thank my supervisor, Professor Donald Childs, for his support, guidance, patience, and unfailing dependability during the whole course of my work on this thesis. My most heartfelt thanks are to the English Department of the University of Ottawa and to Dr. Irena Makaryk, in particular, for valuable advice and continuing encouragement and support in the course of my studies at the University of Ottawa. Last, but not least, I thank my husband and my daughter for their love and support. IV Criticism by Genre: The Menippean Tradition in British Dystopian Fiction (Erewhon and Brave New World) Acknowledgments iii Table of Contents iv A Note on Erewhon's Text and Abbreviations vi Abstract vii Introduction 1 Chapter 1. Dystopian terminology and major critical approaches to dystopian fiction 13 Chapter 2. Menippean Satire 38 Chapter 3. Samuel Butler and Erewhon 58 3.1 Erewhon's scholarly and critical reception 59 3.2 Erewhon's Literary Models 73 Chapter 4. A Choice Between Two Nothings: Huxley and Brave New World 208 4.1 Major critical approaches to Brave New World 211 4.2 Adorno and Brave New World 220 4.3 Brave New World and Supplement to Bougainville's "Voyage" 231 4.4 Brave New World as a dystopian novel 247 Chapter 5. Human Nature in Dystopian Fiction 256 Notes 287 Works Cited and Consulted 300 VI A Note on Erewhon's Text All references to Butler's Erewhon or Over the Range are to the novel's text edited by Hans-Peter Breuer and Daniel F. Howard (London and Toronto: Associated University Press, 1981). Based on the second July, 1872, publication of Erewhon, Breuer's and Howard's edition presents what the editors call "the nineteenth-century version" of the novel and lists all the alterations and revisions Butler made for his 1901 edition in the appendix. The editors thus give readers the unique opportunity to acquaint themselves with Erewhon's original 1872 text, to identify the changes Butler made in his later 1901 revised edition, and to judge for themselves whether the writer's outlook underwent any significant changes. List of Abbreviations E Erewhon ER Erewhon Revisited LH Life and Habit EON Evolution, Old and New NB Notebooks BNW Brave New World BNWR Brave New World Revisited DL The Devils ofLoudun vii Abstract "Criticism by Genre: The Menippean Tradition in British Dystopian Fiction" investigates the origins of distinctive features of the English dystopian novel in the ancient and longstanding tradition of Menippean satire. The study traces this influence in the two novels that are most influential on the twentieth-century dystopian tradition in England: Butler's Erewhon and Huxley's Brave New World. Starting with a critical survey of the main concepts and terms that animate contemporary approaches to dystopian fiction, the study identifies a lacuna in the present understanding of the nature and function of this genre: no one has yet appreciated its descent from Menippean satire. Recognizing the debt Erewhon and Brave New World owe to the tradition of Menippean satire and to the work of its famous practitioners—Lucian, Thomas More, Voltaire, Diderot, and Swift— the study reassesses the attitudes toward human nature and the human condition that are developed in these novels, especially as these attitudes emerge through the voice of a fallible narrator. Identifying an ironic structure within these novels that prevents identification of the narrator's point of view with that of the author—an ironic structure almost universally ignored in the critical literature on these novels—the study modifies prevailing definitions of the dystopian genre as a whole and corrects prevailing misunderstandings of Butler and Huxley, providing new interpretations of their structural use of irony on the one hand, and of their attitudes toward human nature and the human condition on the other. The study also explores the critically neglected affinities between Erewhon and Defoe's Robinson Crusoe and Diderot's Supplement to Bougainville's "Voyage" and Brave New World, arguing that the polemics that Butler and Huxley maintain with the work of their famous predecessors allows us to recognize some distinctly dystopian aspects of their novels. 1 Introduction The present study attempts to rethink the genre of dystopian fiction by focusing on those aspects of some British dystopian novels which have been either ignored or disregarded by major critical studies of the genre or of its particular representative works. Major contemporary studies tend to regard dystopian fiction as a relatively recent, twentieth- century phenomenon which is mainly characterized by its negative response to numerous optimistic nineteenth-century fictional Utopias and their disastrous twentieth-century incarnations in the real-life societies of the Soviet Union, China, North Korea, Cuba, and various other countries. The fear of totalitarian nightmare may explain why the canon of dystopian fiction, quantitatively modest in comparison with that of the other literary genres, has generated a wealth of critical books, articles, and dissertations. However, the critical assumptions that underlie major interpretations of dystopian classics show rare consistency. Numerous critical approaches to Aldous Huxley's Brave New World and George Orwell's 1984 interpret these dystopian classics as severe criticism of the Utopian ideal, as a warning against dangerous trends that already manifest themselves in the writers' contemporary societies, or as an expression of fear of totalitarian nightmare. Significantly, these interpretations also manifest the critical tendency to identify the dystopian writer's views and position with those of his protagonist(s) and to assume that the meaning in a dystopian novel is based on a clearly delineated opposition between the oppressive power of the ruling regimes and the helplessness of the individuals subjected to oppression.
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