Love in Huxley’s Brave New World and Island
| Thesis title in Czech: | Láska v Huxleyových románech Konec civilizace a Ostrov |
|---|---|
| Thesis title in English: | Love in Huxley’s Brave New World and Island |
| Key words: | Aldous Huxley|Konec civilizace|Ostrov|dystopie|utopie|láska|rodina|vztahy|sexualita |
| English key words: | Aldous Huxley|Brave New World|Island|dystopia|utopia|love|family|relationships|sexuality |
| Academic year of topic announcement: | 2021/2022 |
| Thesis type: | Bachelor's thesis |
| Thesis language: | angličtina |
| Department: | Department of Anglophone Literatures and Cultures (21-UALK) |
| Supervisor: | Mgr. Radvan Markus, Ph.D. |
| Author: | hidden - assigned and confirmed by the Study Dept. |
| Date of registration: | 03.03.2022 |
| Date of assignment: | 07.03.2022 |
| Administrator's approval: | not processed yet |
| Confirmed by Study dept. on: | 14.03.2022 |
| Date and time of defence: | 06.09.2022 00:00 |
| Date of electronic submission: | 08.08.2022 |
| Date of proceeded defence: | 06.09.2022 |
| Submitted/finalized: | committed by student and finalized |
| Opponents: | Mgr. Pavla Veselá, Ph.D. |
| Guidelines |
| The term “utopia” as we know it today was coined by Sir Thomas More, and it appeared for the first time in his book Utopia (1516), referring to an imaginary perfect or nearly perfect society or community. The word comes from Ancient Greek and translates as “no place.” The antonym, or a counterpart, to utopia is anti-utopia or dystopia, which began to be commonly used in the twentieth century, and refers to an imaginary frightening or undesirable society or community. Apart from George Orwell’s 1984 (1949), Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World (1932) is probably the second best known dystopian novel. Although there are occasional discussions regarding the novel’s genre, it is commonly presented as a dystopian counterpart to Huxley’s utopian philosophical novel which he wrote thirty years later, Island (1962). The two novels are often contrasted and labelled as polar opposites, Island being a redesigned and more optimistic vision of the future human society than Brave New World.
There are many differences between the ways in which Huxley designed the world and society of Brave New World, and then several decades later that of Island. Some solutions of the world’s problems, however, are quite similar in both novels, differing only in Huxley’s approach to them and their position within the dystopian and utopian environment. This thesis will be introduced with a general description of the dystopia-utopia polarity and interconnection in the novels, and then it will specifically analyse Huxley’s handling of the topic of love and interpersonal relations with focus on love as such, the concept of family and its dynamics, and sexuality. The treatment of these topics varies in Brave New World and Island, but in some cases the core of certain ideas is almost the same, with differences arising only from the dystopian or utopian context. For this reason, this thesis will analyse the differences as well as possible similarities between Huxley’s approach to love in Brave New World and Island. |
| References |
| Claeys, Gregory. “The Origins of Dystopia: Wells, Huxley and Orwell.” In The Cambridge Companion to Utopian Literature, Cambridge. Edited by Gregory Claeys. 107-132. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010.https://www.proquest.com/books/origins-dystopia-wells-huxley-orwell/docview/2137996255/se-2?accountid=15618.
Christensen, Bryce J. 1991. “The Family in Utopia.” Renascence 44, no. 1 (1991): 31-44.https://doi.org/10.5840/renascence199144110. Birnbaum, Milton. “Aldous Huxley’s Animadversions upon Sexual Love.” Texas Studies in Literature and Language 8, no. 2 (Summer 1966): 285-296.http://www.jstor.com/stable/40753902. Heise von der Lippe, Anya. “Aldous Huxley, Brave New World (1932).” In Handbook of the English Novel of Twentieth and Twenty-First Centuries. 213-231. Berlin: De Gruyter, 2017.https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=e000xww&AN=1538460&lang=cs&site=ehost-live. Buchanan, Bard. “Oedipus in Dystopia: Freud and Lawrence in Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World.” Journal of Modern Literature 25, no. ¾ , Global Freud: Psychoanalytic Cultures and Classic Modernism (Summer 2002): 75-89.https://www.jstor.org/stable/3831855. Miller, Gavin. “Political Repression and Sexual Freedom in Brave New World and 1984.” In Huxley’s Brave New World: Essays. Edited by David Garrett Izzo and Kim Kirkpatrick. 17-25. Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company, 2008. Poller, Jake. Aldous Huxley and Alternative Spirituality. Leiden: Brill, 2019. Tripp, Ronja. “Biopolitical Dystopia: Aldous Huxley, Brave New World (1932).” In Dystopia, Science Fiction, Post-Apocalypse: Classics, New Tendencies, Model Interpretations. Edited by Eckart Voigts and Alessandra Boller. 29-45. Trier, Germany: Wissenschaftlicher Verlag Trier, 2015.https://www.academia.edu/19033048/_Tripp_Biopolitical_Dystopia_Aldous_Huxley_Brave_New_World. |