Artur Blaim

Uniwersytet Gdański, Institute of English and American Studies, Faculty Member

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Artur Blaim is Professor of English Literature at the University of Gdańsk and member of Academia Europea. He is the author of Early English Utopian Fiction (1984), Aesthetic Objects and Blueprints. English Utopias of the Enlightenment (1997), Gazing in Useless Wonder. English Utopian Fiction 1516-1800 (2013), Robinson Crusoe and His Doubles (2016), Utopian Visions and Revisions, or the Uses of Ideal Worlds (2017). He has co-edited several volumes, including Bibliotheca Utopiana series comprising Polish translations of classic English utopias and published numerous articles on cultural semiotics, literary and filmic utopias, and William Shakespeare.
Address: Lublin, Lubelskie, Poland

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Cultural Semiotics — The Uses of a Theory

Russian Literature, 1994

As if it wasn't a good island" : failed and forgotten utopias in the cinematic adaptations of William Golding's Lord of the flies

Utopian Horizons: Ideology, Politics, Literature ed. by Zsolt Czigányik (review)

Utopian Studies, 2018

Reviewed by Artur Blaim, University of Gdańsk epistemological interest, an examination of the exp... more Reviewed by Artur Blaim, University of Gdańsk epistemological interest, an examination of the explicit fictionalization of the utopian tradition in Murakami’s novel could have resulted in a reading of the text as the actual narration of postmodernist discourses with strong anti-utopian impulses. One of the questions in this context could be to what extent the confliction on different textual levels involves and narrates an anti-utopian denial of utopianism in general. How are utopian hope/utopian impulses and antiutopian pessimism in these postmodernist novels negotiated? Does this form another unsolvable inner-fictional antagonism, another différend in itself ? In focusing on the interface of postmodernism and utopia, Leiß’s book is an interesting contribution to utopian studies asking important questions. It is definitely worthwhile to examine the poetological characteristics of literary works, in which diverse utopian and/or dystopian worlds are outlined by means of postmodernist...

Chapter V Dystopia/Negative Worlds: The Paradigm Reversed

Gazing in Useless Wonder: English Utopian Fictions, 1516–1800

PREFACE: Spectres of Utopia

Chapter I Thomas More’s De optimo reipublicae statu deque noua insula Vtopia

Islands as Laboratories in Early Modern Literature and Beyond

Tekstualia

The paper explores the functioning of the island motif in early modern literature and its later e... more The paper explores the functioning of the island motif in early modern literature and its later evolution into an instrument of critiquing the traditional European culture. In both cases islands are considered as a special kind of laboratories conceptualized both as places of work and places where experiments are performed in the ideal conditions of isolation from the external world.

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Introduction: Solidarity and Utopia

Utopian Studies

Superhumans, Transhumans, and Posthumans in Early Modern Utopian Fiction

Roczniki Humanistyczne

The paper analyses the functioning of transhumanist and posthumanist motifs in Renaissance and En... more The paper analyses the functioning of transhumanist and posthumanist motifs in Renaissance and Enlightenment utopias which invariably foreground the natural enhancement of human mental and physical capabilities not only by ideal social and political conditions, but also education, improved diet, healthy and moral lifestyle. New technologies and inventions may contribute to the comforts of life, but ultimately do not alter the traditional model of humanity. Occasionally introduced transhuman and posthuman creatures do not constitute models of the future development of humanity, functioning only as satirical elements, or as devices increasing the sensational appeal of the works in which they appear.

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Marian Frąckowiak. Poglądy Ekonomiczne Tomasza More. Poznańskie Towarzystwo Przyjacioł Nauk. Prace Kormisji Nauk Społecznych XI (Poznań 1967)

Moreana

More’s Utopia : Persuasion or polyphony?

Moreana, 1982

Deirdre Ní Chuanacháin. Utopianism in Eighteenth-Century Ireland. Cork: Cork University Press, 2016. Pp. 260. $44.00 (cloth)

Journal of British Studies, 2017

water itself, while French state builders were more likely to define their territorial boundary a... more water itself, while French state builders were more likely to define their territorial boundary as ending at the coastline. This question of the extent of sovereignty manifested itself in symbolic disputes—such as the insistence of the British Navy that its ships be saluted by all foreign vessels within the confines of the Channel—but also in efforts to regulate the behavior of subjects through defining legitimate prizes in war, constraining smuggling, and ensuring adequate national access to limited natural resources like seaweed and fish. In part three, “Transgressing the Border,” Morieux argues that state attempts to impose control over borders and populations were often remarkably unsuccessful. He suggests that while historians have focused on elite-centered nationalisms as part of their attempts to explain Anglo-French rivalry, local identities trumped national ones in many maritime communities. He highlights such fascinating incidents of French fishing communities as Dieppe’s and Boulogne’s reaching out directly to English counterparts Hastings and Folkestone to negotiate truces during periods of war. While fishermen on both sides did at times petition the state to intervene against their foreign rivals, they were also likely to attack their local rivals using the same terms and arguments. Fishermen fromRochester complained about those fromChatham undermining a publicly useful nursery for seamen; oystermen from Breton complained about those from Normandy being “forains” [foreigners] who were illegitimately pillaging Breton oyster beds. States could also be complicit in blurring certain types of national lines: both France and England at times implicitly encouraged smuggling on the premise that it would draw off hard currency from the other. For many people, identity and community were points of reference that existed apart from strictly defined national borders. (It is presumably for this reason that Morieux speaks in terms of “England” rather than “Great Britain,” as a British identity would likely have been one step further distant than an English one.) The Channel has a number of strengths. It is genuinely bicoastal in its sources, focus, and arguments. It connects with an impressively wide array of literatures, from the expected (state-building) to the surprising (the history of fossils). Morieux clearly articulates the stakes of his argument. He rightly insists on England’s many connections to the Continent and reminds us that Anglo-French rivalry was not “natural” nor was it geographically determined. Ultimately, The Channel does not overturn the dominant paradigm of Anglo-French competition—it is too important a backdrop to the phenomena Morieux discusses. It is surely not a coincidence, for example, that it was in the 1690s—the first decade of the Second Hundred Years War—that state-sponsored French mapmakers produced as many maps of the Channel as in the previous three decades combined, or that this was the moment when they began to insist in ever increasing numbers on referring to it as “La Manche” rather than a variant such as “the English Sea.” Elite politics clearly did play a role in defining the zone of the Channel: they shaped the parameters of warfare, economic opportunity, and legal recourse that non-elites exploited to pursue their own agendas. However, Morieux makes a compelling argument for the value of studying the Channel from the sea up, as well as from the state down.

“A Conspiracy of the Rich”: Dystopianizing the Real in More's <em>Utopia</em>

Utopian Studies, 2016

The article presents an analysis of the ways in which Europe, at first presented in Book One of M... more The article presents an analysis of the ways in which Europe, at first presented in Book One of More’s Utopia as superior or at least comparable to the New World, is gradually turned into a dystopia as Hythloday increasingly concentrates on its faults and vices, especially when explicitly or implicitly contrasted with the ideal functioning of Utopia. This process of “dystopianizing” what for the readers constitutes the real culminates in Hythloday’s concluding harangue projecting Europe as the ultimate sin-driven dystopia.

Utopian Studies in Poland: A Preliminary Survey

Utopian Studies, 2016

The article presents a general overview of utopian studies in Poland from the late nineteenth cen... more The article presents a general overview of utopian studies in Poland from the late nineteenth century until recent times. Since the very beginning an important role was played by attempts to formulate an adequate definition of the utopian genre. Apart from the communist period, in which a highly politicized approach predominated, in later times the essentially individualistic and polycentric character of Polish utopian studies came to the fore. The downfall of the communist system brought about a rapidly rising interest in utopian studies facilitated by Polish translations of some of the most important studies by Zygmunt Bauman, Bronisław Baczko, Fredric Jameson, and Leszek Kołakowski. The last twenty-six years witnessed the publication of numerous monographs, collective volumes, special issues of scholarly journals, and individual articles on various aspects of utopias and utopianism considered from different ideological and disciplinary perspectives.

Utopian Visions and Revisions

Mediated Utopias: From Literature to Cinema

Studies in Verbal and Visual Narratives, 2015

Spectres of Utopia

Spectres of Utopia, 2012

Encounters with Utopia

Academia Utopiana: Universities and Research Institutions in Early Modern Utopian Fictions

The Campus Novel

Artur Blaim

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