Course for international guest/part time students
- Faculty
- Faculty of Humanities
- Organization
- BTK Department of English Studies
- Code
- BBI-ANG17-312E.31
- Title
- Elective seminar in English literature: Utopian tradition in English Language Literature
- Usual semester
- Spring
- Published semester
- 2026/27/1
- ECTS
- 5
- Language
- en
- Learning outcomes
- This course is designed for students with an interest in various forms of utopian and dystopian literature. It is meant to broaden its participants’ outlook on the historical evolution of the dual genre. This will be done through considering some of the major early (Classical, Mediaeval, Early Modern and Folkloric) and later (Modern and near-Contemporary) documents of how the utopian impulse was first articulated in myth, religion, philosophy and popular literature before its fictional expression achieved its twentieth-century variety and sophistication. The prospects of the dual genre’s current and future survival is also to be considered.
- Course content
- Several shorter utopian and/or dystopian selections from the anthology The Utopia Reader as well as two full-length novels and a short story to be read at home, presented and discussed in class and/or in written home assignments.
- Assessment method
- End-of-term practical mark (gyakorlati jegy) based on tasks, assignments and tests as announced by the instructor on the first occasion (presentations, in-class and take-home essays and quizzes, etc.).
- Bibliography
- Primary sources Extracts from The Utopia Reader (1999), ed. by G. Claeys and L. T. Sargent. Burgess, Anthony. A Clockwork Orange (1962) Orwell, George. Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949) Egan, Greg. “Reasons to be Cheerful” (1997) Secondary sources Sections, as specified by the instructor, from the major critical and theoretical works listed below: Booker, M. Keith. The Dystopian Impulse in Modern Literature (1994) Claeys, Gregory. Dystopia. A Natural History (2017) Firchow, Peter. Modern Utopian Fictions from H. G. Wells to Iris Murdoch (2007) Gottlieb, Erika. Dystopian Fiction East and West (2001) Sargent, Lyman Tower. Utopia: A Very Short Introduction (2010)