Visual Utopianism in Victorian England: William Morris and His "Teachers"

• Thesis title in Czech: Vizuální utopismus ve viktoriánské Anglii - William Morris a jeho "učitelé"
• Thesis title in English: Visual Utopianism in Victorian England: William Morris and His "Teachers"
• Key words: William Morris|Thomas Carlyle|John Ruskin|Ernst Bloch|utopie|vidění|viktoriánská doba|romantismus|společnost|umění|práce|architektura|malebno
• English key words: William Morris|Thomas Carlyle|John Ruskin|Ernst Bloch|utopia|vision|Victorian Age|Romanticism|society|art|work|architecture|picturesque
• Academic year of topic announcement: 2015/2016
• Thesis type: diploma thesis
• Thesis language: angličtina
• Department: Department of Anglophone Literatures and Cultures (21-UALK)
• Supervisor: prof. PhDr. Martin Procházka, CSc.
• Author: hidden - assigned and confirmed by the Study Dept.
• Date of registration: 02.11.2015
• Date of assignment: 02.11.2015
• Administrator's approval: not processed yet
• Confirmed by Study dept. on: 04.11.2015
• Date and time of defence: 05.09.2017 00:00
• Date of electronic submission: 09.08.2017
• Date of proceeded defence: 05.09.2017
• Submitted/finalized: committed by student and finalized
• Opponents: PhDr. Zdeněk Beran, Ph.D.

Guidelines

Newly established industrial production positively and negatively re-shaped the face of Victorian England and gave rise to a number of negative reactions which reflected abrupt social and historical changes. William Morris, the founding figure of the Arts and Crafts Movement, was one of the notable social commentators who stood in a strong opposition towards mechanization which replaced traditional handwork in a relatively short time. He was struggling for genuine handicraft not only practically, by working as one of the foremost designers of the era but also theoretically, by producing a number of lectures and literary texts which represent his beliefs and communicate social stands and aesthetics of the Age. Furthermore, Morris is also the author of a utopian novel News from Nowhere, or, an Epoch of Rest: being some chapters from a utopian romance which has its strong and very specific position in the tradition of British utopian writing (beginning with Thomas More’s Utopia).
The aim of this MA thesis is to present William Morris as a utopian thinker with focus on the centrality of vision in his thought. As vision can be grasped (at least) in three different ways with focus on the physical aspect of vision (as to receive physical stimuli, which has been promoted by science), psychological aspect (as to “imagine” and “dream”, which was greatly stressed by Romantics in the 19^th century) and political aspect (as to see into the future, which is the epitome of utopia and utopian thought), the interpretation must take into account all three aspects. Seeing can be viewed as a natural ability of each human being which is emblematic not only of creative ability, but also of consumption (as “to see” means to also receive information) and democracy (sight is the sense common to human beings). I am convinced that Morris’ utopian thinking (taking utopia not in the narrow sense as a literary genre but in a wider sense encompassing any human activity aimed at transforming the given state of things) provides a feasible way of how to approach this great Victorian thinker and present his ideas on society, design and art in a clear and captivating manner.
As to my approach, the overall structure of the work will respect the central argument of the widely held “from romantic to revolutionary” thesis presented by William Thompson’s book of the same title, the book that has the greatest influence among Morris’ scholars. Nevertheless, the thesis will be restructured in a way that the dialectical view on Morris’ thinking will be sidelined, and so he will be presented as a “revolutionary” Victorian who has never fell out with Romanticism, which Thompson’s attitude may obscure (mainly when he presents mature Morris as a revolutionary Marxist and so makes him distinct from the early Morris reading Romantic poetry). Firstly, I will attempt to exemplify the understanding of vision by a number of Romantic poets (which will cover the aspect closely related to “imagination”) and the transformation of the approach to vision and “seeing” in a wider Victorian cultural context. This should provide a sound background for assessing the role of “the visual” among the two Victorians who deeply inspired Morris (his “teachers”) – Thomas Carlyle and John Ruskin. Finally, I will focus on Morris’ utopian thinking and closely examine its individual features (art vs. craft, technology, society, space, etc.) in relation to “the visual”. It should become clear that a mere utopian “dream” must be materialized and that vision is a tangible thing for Morris; yet, he still retains its spiritual dimension which has been highlighted by his predecessors (and Romantics).
As to the theoretical background, I will make use of Ernst Bloch’s The Principle of Hope and Karl Mannheim’s Ideology and Utopia. The reason for this selection is a reaction to Ruth Levitas’s claim that “the absence of reference to Bloch in recent re-evaluations of Morris is surprising” with which I strongly agree, as there is a great similarity between Bloch’s and Morris’s approach (mainly in relation to vision, as I will show). I will focus on the two terms: “hope” and “Not-Yet”. Secondly, Mannheim’s work is essential with regard to the political aspect of utopia, as it provides a distinction between “ideology” and “utopia”.

References

Beaumont, Matthew. “News from Nowhere and the Here and Now: Reification and the Representation of the Present in Utopian Fiction.” Victorian Studies. Autumn 2004.

Beaumont, Matthew. Utopia ltd: ideologies of social dreaming in England, 1870-1900. Leiden; Boston: Brill, 2005.

Bennett, Phillippa. “The Architecture of Happiness: Building Utopia in the Last Romances of William Morris.” Spaces of Utopia: An Electronic Journal. Nr. 4, Spring 2007 .

Bloch, Ernst. The Principle of Hope. Cambridge: M.I.T. Press, 1986.

Cole, G.D.H. William Morris as a Socialist. London: William Morris Society, 1960.

Gilbert, Nathanael. “The Landscape of Resistance in Morris´s News from Nowhere.” The Journal of William Morris Studies. Winter 2004 .

Mannheim, Karl. Ideology and Utopia. London: Routledge, 1979.

Morris, William. News from nowhere or an epoch of rest: being some chapters from a utopian romance. London; New York: Routledge, 1992.

Morton, Arthur Leslie. The English Utopia. London: Lawrence & Wishart, 1952

Wegner, Phillip E. Imaginary communities: utopia, the nation, and the spatial histories of modernity. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002.

Morton, A. L. Political writings of William Morris. Berlin : Seven seas publishers, 1973.

Shaw, Christopher. “William Morris and the Division of Labour: The Idea of Work in News from Nowhere.”.

Weinroth, Michelle. Reclaiming William Morris: Englishness, sublimity, and the rhetoric of dissent. Montreal : McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1996.