Gazing in Useless Wonder. English Utopian Fiction 1516-1800

Artur Blaim's Gazing in Useless Wonder. English Utopian Fictions 1516-1800, the thirteenth volume of the esteemed Ralahine Utopian Studies series, has already received praises as a must-read monograph from such renowned utopian scholars as Lyman Tower Sargent and Gregory Claeys-and indeed it challenges anyone who would dare state otherwise. And even though such flawless pieces of research are not that common, Blaim's book definitely has the potential to set a precedent in that regard, being a thorough and cohesive analysis of rather sporadically interpreted utopian texts and novels from even less often studied historical periods.Already the book's composition reveals a direct association between the emergence of utopian fiction and the publication of Sir Thomas More's De optimo reipublicae statu deque noua insula Utopia. The introductory chapter sets up a clear distinction between utopian politics-widely discussed in philosophical or sociological terms by such famous scholars and theorists as Fredric Jameson and Ruth Levitas-and so-called "self-referential texts" (2), combining a mimetic approach to real-world representation and a semiotic one toward fictional world-building. Having set the year 1516 as a terminus a quo for the development of the eponymous utopian fictions, Blaim proceeds thereafter with establishing a binary model for utopian text, dialogic or polyphonic (sensu Mikhail Bakhtin) on the rhetorical level and bipartite on both topographical and narrative levels. Therefore, Blaim's reading of early modern utopias emphasizes their two-worldliness, involving at least two transitions: (1) from narrative framework (e.g., dulci et utile) to utopian description (e.g., ut pictura poesis) and (2) from the imperfect actual world to its utopian alternative (5-9).It is no wonder, then, that the main part of the book begins with a comprehensive interpretation of the rhetorical and world-building ambivalences in Thomas More's Libellus vere aureus-starting with the genological dichotomy of platonic dialogue and travel narrative that is so famously evoked by its title ("the best state of commonwealth and the new island of utopia"). Blaim sees the character-narrator Raphael Hythlodaues as a key embodiment of this underlying dichotomy meant to establish a simplified (if not simplistic) worldview comprising Imperfect Europe and Perfect Utopia and governed by a principle of rhetorical juxtaposition (all versus nothing, any versus no one, everywhere/anywhere versus nowhere, ever versus never, equality versus inequality, true versus false, wisdom versus folly, order versus disorder, community versus privacy, and so on) (30). And although Blaim does not refer here directly to Mieke Bal's redefined concept of Genette's focalization, it is evident that he sees Hythlodaues not as the third-person narrator but as a point-of-view character whose subjective account relativizes the worldview of Utopia-and, as such, may be evaluated by the other characters (including Thomas More himself as a fictionalized avatar) and readers alike. This reminds that even though More's Utopia is quite often casually reduced to a travel or even a portal-quest narrative, it clearly utilizes a variety of rhetorical and narrative devices to undermine the credibility of the account and, thereby, also the legitimacy of any logocentric, totalitarian, or axiologically biased vision of the ideal city/society. And this discrepancy is considered the main reason for the, usually considered ironic, names and aptronyms (Achorians = Placeless People, Amaurotum = Ghost City, Anydrus = Waterless [River], etc.) used throughout the course of More's narrative and dialogic devices as well (Platonic syncrisis and anacrisis used for, correspondingly, juxtaposing different points of view and provoking interlocutors' sincerity). Finally, Blaim pursues Mikhail Bakhtin's notion of menippea as a combination of the fantastic and ideologically motivated adventure and derives from More's Utopia a (pretty lengthy) genre description for early modern utopian fiction as the "two-partite composition ... comprising the narrative frame and the descriptive [pseudo-ekphrastic] utopian section ... corresponding to the axiologically charged division into the negatively evaluated author's world and the image of an ideal(ised) fictional state" (57).Having established this twofold genre pattern or paradigm as a point of departure, Artur Blaim sets off for the journey across "the margins of utopia" in the second chapter of the book, visiting a number of utopian lands including Nova Solyma, Heliopolis, New Athens, City of the Sun, Noland, Cacklogallinia, Macaria, Veritas, Mauqsun, Bonhommica, and many, many others, revealing yet another characteristic aspect of Gazing in Useless Wonder. This would be the proliferation of extensive quotations and excerpts from more than sixty(!) meticulously analyzed utopian narratives, some of them (e.g., The Travels of Hildebrand Bowman or Siuqila) rarely analyzed in utopian studies. From this chapter on, those citations become so numerous that they occasionally preponderate Blaim's own commentary-and yet this all the more encourages the reader to follow his swift literary references and to discover, thereby, an amazing continuity of More's utopian idea. In "The Margins of Utopia" Blaim not only visits the imaginary outlands neighboring the island of Utopia but also points at extra- (prefaces, introductions, mottoes, letters, etc.) and intradiegetic elements of the narrative (precise spatiotemporal coordinates, references to actually/historically living people, artifacts brought to Europe from utopian lands, etc.)-all used for enhancing the verisimilitudinousness of utopian world-building thanks to the so-called "documentary" (83) or even "reality effect" (81). This spectral presence of Roland Barthes, echoed by the latter term, can, however, be a bit misleading here, since what Blaim ponders on is not necessarily realist poetics or means of realistic representation but, rather, ways of legitimizing the factual existence of the nonplace by referring to authoritative resources. Though obviously already prefigured in More's Utopia-which was many a time interpreted as a "multidisciplinary" piece of fiction1-those additions play a pivotal role in expanding the utopian storyworld and bringing a "pseudo-autobiographical tale of adventure" into the genre of travel narrative (97). Blaim manages also, which is maybe the most engaging part of this chapter, to elaborate further on the issue of dialogue, adding a pinch of postcolonial bitterness to the vision of the cross-boundary transfer of transformative ideas between the continent of empeiria and the island of utopia. And even though some may question the usefulness of Blaim's distinction between the narrative and descriptive parts of utopia (since at least from the 1990s there has been an increasing tendency to use the term narrative in its broadest possible sense), it proves efficient when allowing Blaim to define the emerging utopian novel by the "highest degree of integration between the narrative frame and the utopian part of the text" (125).However, Artur Blaim does not directly refer to the so-called topographical or spatial turn in literary theory, but he clearly adheres to its principles in the chapter "Utopian Spaces and Places." It begins with a very important remark that "the temporal distance between the miserable present and the blissful past (Eden, the Golden Age) is translated into spatial categories, into a geographical distance between temporally coexisting entities" (135)-which may be quite successfully used against the popular term uchronia, which, all in all, does not differ from utopia as far as the world-building is concerned. The emphasis on the world and utopian ways of world-making develops throughout the course of Blaim's book into a theoretical frame for his study, serving as a possible (though not wholeheartedly utilized) counterbalance to the historical literary account, which, quite evidently, is regarded here as the most important and informative one. Having introduced classical topographical coordinates of cultural anthropology (here-there, top-bottom, near-far, etc.), Blaim proceeds to analyze the most fundamental spatial distinction of center and peripheries, acknowledging that the geometric perfection of utopian design corresponds with an "elaborate system of peripheralising the imperfect and undesirable" (156). Blaim does not ponder, however, on the eponymous "useless wonders" of geometric and political symmetry, moving on to prove the contrary: a usefulness and pragmaticism of utopian space and place, where all the objects must serve a utilitarian purpose (160). Accordingly, utopian spaces and places are viewed as exposing a wide range of binary oppositions in their designs: the splendor of public space contradicts the simplicity of private interiors, the elevation of government buildings opposes the lower allocation of citizen buildings, and even the circular or round design of many utopias helps stress the difference between the prosperous locus amoenus within the borders of utopia (145) and a paradigmatically dispossessed outside (well depicted by Neal Stephenson in the heterotopian dichotomy of "intramuros" and "extramuros" in the novel Anathem).The chapter "Utopian Institutions, Utopian People" follows up the initial topographical distinctions to circumscribe social hierarchical discrepancies within utopian societies, usually concentrated around a strong political or religious figure. This part is also perhaps the strongest manifestation of Blaim's inclination toward "world-centered," to use Marie-Laure Ryan's narratological concept2, analysis. This time, thereby, instead of a plot-centered approach to utopian narratives, the main emphasis is laid on the politics, education, religion, social hierarchies, jurisprudence, and governance of utopia-which in a way mirrors the topos of tour de monde utilized in so many early modern utopian narratives. Utopian world-building, however, is not reduced here to a typical fictional representation: in place of Genette's dialectics of speaking (narrating) and seeing (describing), there is only "the all-pervading gaze" (239), recalled by Blaim after Hanan Yoran and perhaps one of the many inspirations for the provocative title of the book. "Gazing in useless wonder" may be, therefore, interpreted as a specific type of hermeneutics: symbolically and culturally "transparent," "collapsing the signifier into the signified," and eliminating all "cultural fictions" that presumably "contaminate" a pure abstraction of utopian paradigmatic truth (215).Perhaps the most intriguing part of the book is the last one, on dystopias and negative worlds, which introduces the idea of the mainland disconnected from the island of utopia as its negative counterpart visible even in the utilized rhetoric. If there are no wars in utopia, that clearly has to mean that there are wars somewhere else-and perhaps in the very place the utopian protagonist or even the reader happens to come from (232). Artur Blaim describes this world-building premise as an "underlying anti-model" (233) for utopia that is supposed to serve as a trigger of the utopian impulse. The existence of this model, however, is interpreted as a source of infinite theoretical debate on the genological discrepancies among dystopias, anti-utopias, and satirical utopias. The latter are dissolved by Blaim in a way both very diplomatic and brilliant in its simplicity, as he proposes considering both satirical utopia and anti-utopia as functions of the genre of dystopia (243)-not, therefore, subgenres or conventions whose characteristics could easily coincide with those of dystopian origin. Having put an end to a stream of unanswerable questions about authorial intentions or differences between critiques of the real and ideal worlds, Blaim manages to proceed with describing a set of attributes that would differentiate a dystopian world from the utopian one. His most important claim is that while utopia is the domain of truthful signs, dystopia must be, a contrario, the domain of false signs, which twist the verisimilitudinous meaning of narrative account in order to "conceal the reality of insubstantiality and/or decay" (250). This enables ideological continuity and genre integrity alike for such apparently distant texts as Brant's A Voyage to Cacklogallinia (1727) and Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949)-and makes the idea of an "anti-utopian impulse" all the more inspiring.Notwithstanding the fact that utopian studies have been flourishing these days, it is hard to find a better example of such an erudite and intrinsic approach to the subject. Gazing in Useless Wonder offers guidance across a plethora utopian and dystopian storyworlds, successfully fulfilling the historical ambition of the study while simultaneously providing the reader with exceptionally detailed interpretations of the source material. Artur Blaim traverses a multitude of utopian lands, but if the reader has not visited them on his or her own, this book will not grant any thorough insight into those, as it is meant, rather, as a commentary than as an exact, mimetic description. Blaim's book is, therefore, engaging and thought-provoking, though also quite challenging for the reader-and, as such, it remains worth recommending both for advanced utopian scholars wishing to broaden their research horizons and for those whose knowledge of utopias from the 1516-1800 historical period still calls for further studies

Dialogic · Polyphony · Representation · Utopia · Wonder