Alessandro Maurini's book follows in the stream of a series of recent studies that have attempted to reread Aldous Huxley's thought, highlighting the extent to which, especially in his later essays and his novel Island, he expressed ideas and proposals that were to become extremely topical in the latter half of the twentieth century and the first decades of the twenty-first. Read from this perspective, Huxley becomes a utopian writer who anticipated not just some of the fundamental principles of ecology (...) but also those of pacifism, as well as forms of ecological and pacifist communitarian thought. In his introduction, Maurini exposes his work hypothesis and his lines... (shrink)

Gilberta Golinelli's book is set within an important area of utopian studies that, from the 1990s, also via archival studies, started to focus on the numerous utopias penned by women in the early modern English period. The book, significantly titled Gender Models, Alternative Communities and Women's Utopianism, analyzes some of the utopian writings by Margaret Cavendish, Aphra Behn, and Mary Astell. Golinelli did not choose to use the term utopianism on a whim, since the utopias of these authors are hybrids, (...) mixing other genres in their makeup: travel reports, theater, romance, letters.... (shrink)

Gilberta Golinelli’s book is set within an important area of utopian studies that, from the 1990s, also via archival studies, started to focus on the numerous utopias penned by women in the early modern English period. The book, significantly titled Gender Models, Alternative Communities and Women’s Utopianism, analyzes some of the utopian writings by Margaret Cavendish, Aphra Behn, and Mary Astell. Golinelli did not choose to use the term utopianism on a whim, since the utopias of these authors are hybrids, (...) mixing other genres in their makeup: travel reports, theater, romance, letters.... (shrink)

The Italian tradition of utopian studies is indebted to Luigi Firpo, who investigated Thomas More’s Utopia and the utopias of the Italian Counter-Reformation. Although Firpo was a scholar of political science, he highlighted the importance of the literary aspects of utopias. The ability to combine the political aspects of utopias with their fictional and literary aspects may be seen in his important introduction to More’s Utopia. Thus, Firpo’s school has tried to keep these two aspects united, while other political and (...) social scientists who have devoted themselves to utopianism have observed how the present is opposed to a radically alternative project. Utopianism defines the specific mental attitude... (shrink)

Quando la fantascienza è donna by Eleonora Federici is a book of many merits: its theoretical framework is informed by recent perspectives from gender studies, it boasts an extensive bibliography, and it is written in captivating and accessible prose. It is an intelligent book that fills an important gap in the literature, as few works on women science fiction writers have been published in Italian. Indeed, while much has been written on women’s science fiction in the English language, such a (...) tradition has yet to develop in Italian, with one of the first exceptions being Ida Magli’s 1980 essay “L’immagine simbolica femminile e le sue costanti mitico-culturali nella fantascienza”... (shrink)

Lyman Tower Sargent is one of the few scholars and intellectuals I have met whose research and studies are embodied in their actual life, since for him the values of utopianism constitute the base and foundation of his personal and political choices. My essay is a personal reflection on his life and scholarly work.