Imagining socialism : aesthetics, anti-politics, and literature in Britain, 1817-1918
Mark A. Allison (Author)
Socialism" names a form of collective life that has never been fully realized; consequently, it is best understood as a goal to be imagined. This study locates an aesthetic impulse that animates some of the most consequential socialist writing, thought, and practice of the long nineteenth century. Imagining Socialism explores this tradition of radical activism, investigating the diverse ways that British socialists-from Robert Owen to the mid-century0Christian Socialists to William Morris-marshalled the resources of the aesthetic in their efforts to surmount "politics" and develop non-governmental forms of collective life. Their ambitious attempts at social regeneration led some socialists to explore the liberatory potential afforded by co-operative labor, women's emancipation, political violence, and the power of the fine arts themselves. Imagining Socialism demonstrates that, far from being confined to "socialist revival" of the fin de siecle, important socialist experiments with the emancipatory potential of the aesthetic may be found throughout the period it calls the "socialist century" and may still inspire us today
Print Book, English, 2021
First edition View all formats and editions
Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2021
Criticism, interpretation, etc
viii, 278 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm
9780192896490, 0192896490
1198979323
Introduction: A socialist century
"Society is a simple and beautiful science": Aesthetics and anti-politics in Robert Owen's socialism
Poetic vanguardism and political violence in Capel Lofft's "Chartist Epic"
Self-consuming socialism: Affect, ideology, and aesthetics in the Christian socialist movement
Utopian socialism, women's emancipation, and the origins of Middlemarch
"What is to come after this?": William Morris, News from Nowhere, and the aesthetics of the fin-de siècle socialism
Epilogue: The party fight
Works cited
Index