The Anti-Utopian Pessimism of the Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Century
The Anti-Utopian Pessimism of the Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Century

Summary/Abstract: The following paper aims at conducting a research on the utopian spirit of the nineteenth century, a very stimulating period for the discourses regarding the possible. It thus focuses upon this period, premised on the fact that the nineteenth century brings forth mutations at the level of the collective psyche which set apart the human being from classical utopian projections. The fortress, the island, the ideal planet mutate, at the level of fictional projections, into societies which destroy themselves. The imaginary spaces of utopia become subject to a sense of disenchantment, taking different forms and borrowing other operating rules, leaving aside the utopian optimism and the “idolatrous progressivism” so popular a century before. This time span is dominated by an almost nihilist pessimism, a feeling of morbidity which also influence the utopian projections. Anti-utopia gains ground at the expense of utopian optimism. The human being becomes aware of its scarcity in relation to the general laws of decay and dispersion, due to which the type of writing changes.

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