Additional Readings

• Frankenstein and the Limits of Technological Creation:  Introductory Reading:  Professor's notes on the Frankenstein narrative.
    

• Sir Thomas More:  Utopia, excerpts:  The traveler Hythlodaeus describes his visit to the island kingdom of Utopia, a "planned" state established by the king Utopos.  This is the work which gave us the word "utopia," but remember that the word is a pun in Greek--it means both "good place" and "no place," and More intended for us to understand the ambiguity.  There has been much debate over the extent to which More intended his work to be a "real" ideal state.
    

• U.S. Constitution and Bill of Rights:  [Note:  Read the Preamble and Articles and the first 10 Amendments.]  Here the founding fathers attempt to do in fact what More's Utopos did in fiction--to plan the foundation of a new state along rational and even ideal lines.  It draws from the thinking of the French Enlightenment and owes much to the experiences of radical Protestant sects during the English Civil War.  It is full of compromises but is one of the few lasting attempts to translate political ideals into public institutions. (from Findlaw.com)
    

• Karl Marx:  The Communist Manifesto, Parts I and II:  The classic statement of the economic, political and social foundations of modern communist theory.  Marx presents his historical critique of class structure and class conflict.  Ultimately this is a plan for a real utopia, one which Marx sees as historically inevitable.  It sometimes seems startlingly contemporary and sometimes curiously outdated.  The imaginary future society of Zamiatim's We, with the real Soviet Union looming large in the background, offers a searching critique of Marx's vision.
    

• Faust Legends:  Dr. Johann Faustus:  A brief summary of the traditional career of Dr. Faustus, as it was given in the 1587 Faust Chapbook.  It includes the basic details of the pact with the devil, the rewards that Faustus claimed during his lifetime, and Faustus' eventual horrible fate.  This is probably the best-known sixteenth-century version of the Faust-legend and is quite close to the version given in Christopher Marlowe's play.  Other sections of this page cover legends from other sources concerning Faustus or Faustus-like figures.

Page background image credit:  Mars: Lava Flows on Olympus Mons, NASA (Planetary Photojournal)