Utopia: The Search for the Ideal Society in the Western World

This companion volume to the exhibition on view at the Library's Humanities and Social Sciences Library features essays by the distinguished editors as well as by Alain Touraine, J. C. Davis, Krishan Kumar, and other leading European and American scholars of utopian thought and literature. Elegantly designed and richly illustrated with over 300 images from the collections of The New York Public Library and the Bibliothèque nationale de France, this book explores the long tradition in thought and art envisioning the "perfect place," from classical antiquity to the present. Also included are an extensive bibliography of utopian literature, a bibliography of secondary sources, and a filmography.

Contents of the volume:

Preface, by Jean-Pierre Angremy and Paul LeClerc

Frames of Reference: "Utopia: Space, Time, History," by Roland Schaer; "Utopian Traditions: Themes and Variations," by Lyman Tower Sargent; "Society as Utopia," by Alain Touraine

The Sources of Utopia: "Ancient, Biblical, and Medieval Traditions," by Danielle Lecoq and Roland Schaer; "Plato's Atlantis: The True Utopia," by Jean-François Pradeau

Of Other Worlds: The Spread of the Utopian Imagination, from Thomas More to the Enlightenment:
"Utopia and the New World, 1500-1700," by J. C. Davis; "The City as an Intellectual Exercise," by Ruth Eaton; "Mundus novus et renovatio mundi: Messianic and Utopian Currents in the Indies of Castille," by Alain Milhou; "Utopia and the Reformation," by Frank Lestringant; "On the Frontiers of Utopia: Satires and Robinsonades," by Gregory Claeys and Lyman Tower Sargent

Utopia in History: From the Time of Revolutions to the Dawn of the Twentieth Century: "Utopia and Revolutions," by Lyman Tower Sargent and Roland Schaer; "Fin-de-siècle Landscapes Against a Background of Ruins," by Bronislaw Baczko; "Socialism and Utopia," by Gregory Claeys; "Utopia and Nineteenth-century French Literature," by Laurent Portes

Dreams and Nightmares: Utopia and Anti-Utopia in the Twentieth Century: "Utopia and Anti-Utopia in the Twentieth Century," by Krishan Kumar; "Communal Movements in the Twentieth Century," by Yaacov Oved; "Utopia and Twentieth-century Avant-gardes," by Roland Schaer; "Architecture and Urbanism: The Faces of Utopia," by Ruth Eaton; "Utopia and Totalitarianism," by Frédéric Rouvillois; "Utopia and the Late Twentieth Century: A View from North America," by Lyman Tower Sargent; "Utopia and the Philosophical Status of Constructed Space," by Françoise Choay

Envisioning Utopia: "Symbolic Collapse: Utopia Challenged by Its Representations," by Laurent Gervereau