Faith in Utopia: Religion, Aesthetics, and Ideal Objects in Turn of the Century Utopian Novels

Abstract

This dissertation argues that American and English turn of the century utopian novels were sites of theological reflection and religious imagination. While these works stipulated rationalist schemes for the transformation of society into a collectivist or socialist alternative, they maintained structural and philosophical commitments to forms of religion that were amenable to, and could even precipitate, radical change. Throughout this study, I argue that utopian novelists mobilized theories of religion to navigate both political and formal-aesthetic ambivalences of modernity. I survey various ways in which utopian writers defined Christianity as at once a tradition to be discarded and a critical and constructive form of utopian subjectivity. After situating this work in the study of religion and literature, theories of secularism, and the field of utopian studies, I turn to my four case studies on Edward Bellamy, William Morris, William Dean Howells, and Charlotte Perkins Gilman. Throughout these chapters, I contextualize these authors in the Social Gospel, Arts and Crafts, aestheticist, realist, sociological, and feminist religious, scientific, and artistic movements of their day. I scrutinize their conceptions of spirituality, political reform, and collectivity through the lens of twentieth century critical theory. I also note their reliance on what I call “ideal objects,” the specific, material signifiers of broader utopian fulfillment, and I use this concept in my conclusion to draw out how utopian novelists’ ubiquitous considerations of death elucidate the function of utopian literature to breach existential questions of meaning beyond the imaginative achievement of future happiness.