1 Introduction: The Last Men in Europe
2 The Character of Dystopia
The Language of Despair
Realist Dystopia
Setting and Character
Setting as Character
3 What We Talk About When We Talk About Dystopia
The Good Place
Anti-utopianism and Anti-utopias
Dystopian Narrative
Dystopian Law
Post-apocalypse
Future (Im)Perfect
Section II De-forming Character
4 The Last (Hu)Man(ist)
Humanism in Crisis
Utopian and Dystopian Humanism and Anti-humanism
Dystopianism, Naturalism, and Modernism
Defensive Forms: Humanism, Anti-humanism, and the Dystopian Novel
Dystopian Humanism
Dystopian Anti-humanism
5 Anti-Bildungsroman: Dystopia and the End of Character in Zamyatin, Burgess, and Ishiguro
The Novel of De-formation
Allegories of Progress
Divine Minus: Zamyatin’s Reverse Bildungsroman
The Predator’s Progress: Burgess’s Satiric Bildungsroman
Crimes Against Posthumanity: Ishiguro’s Bildungsroman Incarnate
6 Paranoid Plots: Dystopia and the Fantasy of Centrality in Dostoevsky and Orwell
Romantic Paranoia
Paranoid Poetics
"Streets that follow like a tedious argument/ Of insidious intent"
Diseased Romanticism: Dostoevsky’s Psychological Dystopia
He Loved Big Brother: Orwell and the Fantasy of Persecution
Section III Dystopian Variations
7 American Anti-pastoral: Running Down a Dream in West and Mamet
Dystopian Design
What Happens to a Dream Deformed?
West’s World: Dystopian Picaresque in West’s A Cool Million
Utopian Plots: Dystopian Capitalism in Mamet’s Glengarry Glen Ross
8 Romancing the Child: First Teens in Lowry’s The Giver and Butler’s Parable of the Sower
First Teens
New Worlds for Old Desires
A Family Affair: Romantic Humanism in Lowry’s The Giver
On the Road Again: Anti-romantic Anti-humanism in Butler’s Earthseed
9 Epilogue: The Dystopian Real
Biography
Aaron Rosenfeld holds a Ph.D. in English Literature from New York University and is Associate Professor of English at Iona College, teaching classes in 20th-century literature.
