The Cambridge Companion to British Utopian Literature and Culture since 1945

This Companion presents an authoritative study of British utopian literature and culture in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Written by leading scholars, it offers a wide-ranging account of utopian thinking in novels, plays, films, TV, fanzines, and poetry. Scholars and students interested in the utopian imagination will find nuanced analyses of British texts, situated within their materialist contexts. With a particular focus on countercultural and subcultural narratives, the book explores how British utopian visions of better societies offer a forceful critique of contemporary inequities such as racism, gender-based violence, class politics, and ecological harm. Blending the utopian with other genres, including the dystopia, the post-apocalypse, and ecocatastrophe narratives, the texts discussed reveal powerful images of utopian possibility. These works offer us vital imaginative and critical resources at a time of ongoing political, economic, and social crises.