Fantasy and the Poetics of Literary Utopia: Robert Graveś Watch the North Wind Rise

Author(s): Frank Dietz

Source: Utopian Studies, No. 4 (1991), pp. 65-71
Published by: Penn State University Press
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 Fantasy and thePoetics ofLiteraryUtopia: Robert Graves
Watch theNorth Wind Rise

FrankDietz

Robert Graves Utopian novel Watch theNorth Wind Rise (published inGreat Britain as Seven
Days inNew Crete) has receivedrelativelylittleattentionfromeither the general readingpublic,
Graves specialists,or fromUtopian scholars. One reason for thepopular neglectmight lie in the
fact that itspublisher,Creative Age Press,went out of business in 1950,one year afterreleasing
Watch theNorth Wind Rise and that thisnovel was not reissueduntil the nineteen-seventies.185
Graves' book also had themisfortune to be published at a timewhen theUtopian imagination was
overshadowedby dystopianworks. While L. Tower Sargent's standardbibliographyof Britishand
American Utopian literaturelistsnumerous positive utopias published during thenineteen-forties,
among themsuch important works as GranvilleHicks' The First To Awaken (1940),Austin Tappan
Wright's Islandia (1942), and B.F. Skinner'sWaiden Two (1948), theworks fromthatdecade which
have receivedmost scholarlyattentionare certainlyGeorge Orwell's Animal Farm (1945) and
Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949), and, to a lesserdegree,Aldous Huxley's Ape and Essence (1948).186
Another factorcontributingto the relativeobscurityof Watch theNorth Wind Rise is that it
deliberatelycrosses the boundary linesbetween thewell-establishedgenresof fantasyand utopia
and therefore represents somewhat of an embarrassment to scholars in either field.187 Furthermore
Graves' novel exhibits a strong sense of self-irony and ambiguity which undercuts the assurance of
Utopian happiness. This putsGraves' Watch theNorth Wind Rise on a levelwith Thomas More's
Utopia or H.G. Wells' A Modern Utopia and, viewed fromtheperspectiveof today's readers,
makes
it appear to be a predecessor of the ambiguous utopias of the nineteen-seventies and
nineteen-eighties.

Watch theNorth Wind Rise and theUtopian Paradigm

At firstsightWatch theNorth Wind Rise may seem to be a conventional literaryutopia, following

the paradigm set by the classics of the genre. The novel describes the experiencesof Edward
Venn-Thomas, who functions as the first-person narrator, in the future society of New Crete. Like
predecessors,thisUtopian traveleris takenon an extensiveguided tourof theUtopian
his literary
society, and he always asks the right question at the right time. He also eventually returns to the
familiar world of the twentieth century, thus closing the narrative frame.

Ifone looks beyond thisbare plot outline,however,one findsnumerous detailswhich satirizethe

conventions of literary utopias. The Utopian traveler, for instance, is a poet visiting a society where
poets trulyare the legislatorsofmankind. Since Plato banned poets fromhis republic,poets have
faredratherbadly in Utopian societies,but New Crete consciously rejects this traditionand bases
its value system on poetic rather than rational principles. "If we strengthen the poets and let them
become the acknowledged legislatorsof thenew world," as the founderof theUtopian societyhad
written, "magicwill come into its own again, bringingpeace and fertilityin its train."188
This
reference to magic is not merely metaphorical, as the poets in New Crete are truly magicians who
can cast and lay spells. Accordingly, Venn-Thomas travels to the Utopian conununity in a rather

185Martin
Seymour-Smith, Robert Graves: His Life and Work (New York: Holt, Rhinehart & Winston,
1982), 419.

186
Lyman Tower Sargent, British and American Utopian Literature, 1516-1985. An Annotated, Chronological
Bibliography (New York: Garland, 1986), 218-237.

187Robert H.
Canary, "Utopian and Fantastic Dualities in Robert Graves' Watch theNorth Wind Rise,"
Science-Fiction Studies 1 (Fall 1974), 248.

188Robert
Graves, Watch theNorth Wind Rise (1949; New York: Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 1976), 44. From
now on cited parenthetically in the text.

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unconventional way. Instead of using technological means, such as a time machine or some
method of artificial hibernation, Venn-Thomas reaches the future by means of magic worked by a
group of witches. From the veryfirstpage a sense of the fantasticpervades the book, and the
question of realityand illusion (so apt fora poetic utopia) becomes a centralone. The incantation,
as well as all Venn-Thomas sees and does in the future, may be only the result of a dream. Several
times throughoutthenovel thereare allusions to his dream state (as when he suddenlyhears his
wife's voice), and in the end he findshimselfback in his twentieth-century
bedroom without any
timehaving elapsedwhile he was inNew Crete. While thissuggeststhathe was only dreaming,the
knock on thedoor in the last scene impliesthathemight indeedhave broughtStormbird,a woman
fromNew Crete, back with him into the twentiethcentury.Thus thenarrativeframe,insteadof
estabhshingthe impressionof verisimilitudeso importantto nineteenth-century literaryutopias,
foregroundsthe fictionalityof the text. Like Wells' A Modern Utopia (1905), Graves' novel
self-consciously creates an insubstantial and imaginary "bubble" which eventually must burst.

Fantasy andUtopia

Throughout the book Graves creates a tension between the conventions of fantastic and Utopian
literature. This can clearly be seen in Venn-Thomas' reactions to the world of the future. Utopian
travelersare commonly facedwith a societythat is based on a singlerationalprincipleand can be
easily understood once the Utopian guide has provided enough information.This rationalityis
often reflected in the geometrical plans of square (Andreae's Christianopolis) or circular
(Campanula's Chitas Solis) cities. The Utopian society sometimes even reveals its underlying
The world of the fantastic,on the other hand, is
principles to the observer at first sight.189
characterizedbymystery,uncertainty,and the intrusionof the supernaturalinto everydayreality.
The confusion of the protagonist about certain events to natural or supernatural causes
ascribing
been singledout as thedefiningfeatureof the fantasticby Todorov inhis book The
has therefore
Fantastic.190

This feelingof ambiguity is present throughoutthe entirenovel. As befits the inhabitantsof a

run by poets and dedicated to the Muse-Goddess, the New Cretans often seem to express
utopia
themselvesrathermetaphorically. In addition to the factual informationcustomarilygiven to a
traveler, they also tell Venn-Thomas short parable-like stories whose truth he cannot
Utopian
determine.Like theparadoxical "old"Cretans, theseNew Cretansmay simplybe tellingliesall the
time. Venn-Thomas vents his frustration over the mixture of Utopian rationality and fantastic
exhibitedby one of his guides: "thiswas somethinglike a visit to the Ideal Home
irrationality
Exhibition and somethinglike a chapter leftout fromAlice inWonderland. The Interpreter was
theWhite Rabbit to thefife"(54).He thengoes on to remarkthathe had justrecentlyrereadAlice
inWonderland-Ahswork chosen by Eric Rabkin to exemplifythe upside-down world of the
fantastic with its "diametric reversal of the ground rules within a narrative world."191 Like Alice,
Venn-Thomas feels that he has been cast into a world where nothing seems to make sense. This
referencetoAlice inWonderland also suggeststo the readerthat the entireplot is justa dream and
that it should not be read as a coherent Utopian narrative. On the other hand, Venn-Thomas
himselfcontinueshis attemptsto perceivea rationalpatternbehind thecustomsofNew Crete, thus
would. Up to the end, however,
the societyof the futureas a typicalUtopian traveler
interpreting
themost puzzling question forVenn-Thomas iswhy he has been called to the futureat all - a
question rather untypical for a Utopian traveler.

Despite his confusionconcerningthenature of the societyhe findshimselftransportedto and the

purpose of his invocation,Venn-Thomas gradually learns somethingabout the historyof New
Crete and the details of everyday life. The societyof New Crete is the result of a unique
The previous era of "logicalism" came to an end due to an epidemic
anthropological experiment.
woman
of mental disturbances, causing its victims to see "a white-faced, hawk-nosed, golden-haired

189 Frank - in der amerikanischen titerarischen Utopie nach 1945

Dietz, Kritische Tr?ume Ambivalenz
(Mellingen: Corian, 1987), 136-141.

wo Tzvetan to a Literary Genre

Todorov, The Fantastic. A Structural Approach (Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1975).

191Eric S.
Rabkin, The Fantastic in Literature (Princeton: Princeton UP, 1976), 42.

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who whipped them round and round as if theywere tops and urged them to acts of insane
violence"(40). In order to avert a totaldisruptionof society,theAnthropologicalCouncil created
a number of experimentalcommunitiesbased on Bronze Age or Early IronAge technology.The
main impulsebehind these "anthropologicalenclaves"was a book entitledA Critique ofUtopias.
Its author, ben-Yeshuv, had analyzed "some seventy utopias, including Plato's Timaeus and
Republic, Bacon's New Atlantis, Campanella's Chitas Solis, F?nelon's Voyage en Solente, Cabet's
Voyage en Icarie, Lytton's Coming Race, Morris' News from Nowhere, Butler's Erewhon, Huxley's
Brave New World, and various other works of the twenty-first to the twenty-fourth centuries" (41)
before recommending the creation of experimental communities without advanced technology.

Graves' own knowledgeof classicalutopias (withthepointed omission ofMore's

Besides indicating
Utopia and Bellamy's Looking Backward, whose credit system,however, is ridiculed by a New
Cretan earlier in the book-5), this passage reveals another ambiguity. On the one hand, the
Utopian societyof New Crete is depicted as the resultof a social experimentbased on rational
design, even thoughthe inspirationis derivedfromworks of fiction. Seen in thislight,everything
inNew Crete, includingtheworship of theGoddess, performsa definitefunction.At the same
time,however, the strangemental disease attackingtheLogicalists suggeststhatthecreationofNew
Cretemay be reallythework of the 'lovely, slenderwoman with a hooked nose, deathlypale face,
lips redas rowan-berries,staitlingly
blue eyes and longfairhair, "as she isdescribed inGraves' book
The White Goddess.192 The Utopian traveler himself often wavers between amused skepticism and
an acknowledgementof the supernaturalpowers of theWhite Goddess. The demythologizing
world view of Utopian literature, which represents history as the result of human endeavor, is thus
balanced by the metaphysical elements of fantastic fiction.

A thirddiscourse observable inWatch theNorth Wind Rise is thatof thehistoricalnovel. New

Crete resemblesthecultureof Crete of theMinoan Age, and the readerof TheWhite Goddess will
recognize many of Graves' ideas concerning the ancient matriarchal civilizations of the
Mediterranean. Graves, however, had previously mixed historical narrative and private speculation
in hisKing Jesus, and inWatch theNorth Wind Rise he also speculates,as one criticput it, "how
mankind might have developed had not themale God supersededthe female."193 Thus thisnovel
presentsamultivocal textinwhich different
genresrepeatedlyironizeeach other. Genres, as Fredric
Jameson writes, "are essentially literary institutions or social contracts between a writer and a
specific public, whose function is to specify the proper use of a particular cultural artifact."194 The
analogous to thatof the readerwho receives conflicting
confusionof Venn-Thomas is therefore
information on how to interpret this particular cultural artifact.

Custom and Change inNew Crete

The society of New Crete itself reveals further tension and On the one hand, *t is
ambiguities.
unifiedby the forceof custom,which regulatesall aspects of daily lifefromthe educational system
to theproper timefor smokingor drinkingbeer. Custom, theNew Cretans believe, is sanctified
by the Goddess. Custom regulates the division of society into five estates: magician-poets,
recorders, captains, commoners, and servants. Furthermore, custom subjects all material
?
production to theprinciple "nothingwithout thehands of love" (44),which as inMorris' News
from Nowhere? leads to theprohibitionofmost machines and to a merging art andwork. While
of
thesefeaturesestablish theunityof theUtopian society,others suggesta surprisingmultiplicity.A
person's estate,for instance,isnot determinedby birth,but by inclinationand talent.There is no
central government, and each village, while following the general rules of established custom, may
develop lifestyles of its own. Some, for example, may be monogamous, others polygamous, and
people are free to migrate to a village that suits their When a New Cretan reaches
preferences.
retirement age, he or she can live in a so-called "nonsense house," an anarchic place reminiscent of

192Robert
Graves, The White Goddess, A Historical Grammar of Poetic Myth (1948; New York: Vintage
Books, 1958), 12.

Fritz Leiber, "Utopia for Poets and Witches," Riverside Quarterly 4:3 (1970), 197.

194Fredric as a Socially
Jameson, The Political Unconscious, Narrative Symbolic Act (Ithaca, NY: Cornell
UP, 1981), 106. Emphasis in the original.

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Rabelais' Abbey of Theleme. When Venn-Thomas ventures into one of these nonsense houses he
find not only "frescoes which would have made the House of the Two Brothers at Pompei look
as respectable as the parlour of a Bournemouth lodginghouse," but even a man who has invented
a toy steam engine (227). Thus the orderly and pastoral Utopian societyproduces its own
counter-utopia in which everything is allowed.

While books were once important for creation of New Crete, written texts in general are treated
with suspicion. Poets heed thewarning that "Paperfeeds on paper ?Andon theblood ofmen" (80)
and therefore engrave most of their work on clay tablets. Only works of lasting importance are

engravedon thin sheetsof gold or silver. Graves uses thiscustom fora satiricaljab at university
scholars, because of all the "two hundred and seventy-fo^ir thousand books" on Shakespeare only
"two or three thousand" still existed at the time when New Crete was founded. Of these, only three
were preserved (a life of Shakespeare, a digest of Shakespearean Criticism and his Plays and
Poems), only to be laterreduced to threepages forthe secondaryworks and thirtyforthePlays and
Poems (83). This aversion towritingalso indicatesa rejectionof stabilityand authority,and in its
underrninesthevalue of theUtopian text itself.
final consequence it self-ironically

Many Utopian societiesaim at an ideal ofmechanical stability;

New Crete, however, is conceived
as a society following the natural rhythm of growth and decay. Customs, for instance, are
reinterpretedperiodically,and outdated laws are discarded. This coincides with a concern for
ecological problems. Instead of constructingcities of absolute mechanized perfection,theNew
Cretans attempt to integrate their society into nature, which is sacred to the Goddess. Watch the
North Wind Rise transcendsthe estheticinterestinnature exhibitedbyMorris' News fromNowhere
and anticipates later ecological utopias such as Aldous Huxley's Island or Ernest Callenbach's
Ecotopia and Ecotopia Emerging. Even themetaphors used by theNew Cretans to describe their
society are taken from nature rather than from technology. The future society is no longer depicted
as the "machine" of nineteenth-century technological utopianism, but as a tree or a pond.195

This emphasis on change and growth is ultimatelybased on theperception that thewill of the
Goddess may change. The ideaof a utopia dependenton a seeminglycapriciousdeitycertainlyruns
counter to the idealof social stabilityexpressedin somany works of Utopian literature.In Iiis study
The White Goddess, whose scholarly accuracy or inaccuracy is irrelevant for an evaluation of its
influence on Watch theNorth Wind Rise, Graves had emphasized the dual character of the Goddess
as creator and destroyer. In the novel, the Goddness appears to Venn-Thomas first in the shape
of Erica, his former lover (once described by him as "that triple-faced, ash-blonde bitch" ? all
attributes of theWhite Goddess), later as an old woman. She reveals that she herself arranged for
him to be transportedinto the future.The reason forthis is to be found inher ambiguousnature:
she who created New Crete now wants to destroy this near-perfect but stagnant society. Her motive
can be expressed in a short poem quoted earlier by a New Cretan: "When water stinks, I break the
dam/In love I break it" (120). Her decision to conjure up the destructiveNorthWind whichwill
wreak havoc on the towns and cities of New Crete can be interpreted on several levels.

On one level,Watch theNorth Wind Rise can be read as a storyof ritual death and rebirth.This
is suggestedby several incidents in the book. Immediatelybefore the rising of the storm,
Venn-Thomas observes theritualistickillingand eatingof theold kingwho is associatedwith the
for instance, thirteen "nymphs of the month," as the New Cretans are following
dying year (he has,
a lunarcalendar). The king is replacedby his successor,as the societyofNew Cretewill be replaced
by another one. This ritualistic, cyclical view of history is closely related to Graves' discussion of
theWhite Goddess as a deityof fertility
and death.

However, thechanges initiatedby theGoddess includethe introduction

of jealousyandmurder into
thisplacid Utopian society. This goes beyond a mere cyclical change in society reflectingthe
sequence of the seasons. As Jameson has pointed out, "if things can really happen in Utopia, if real
novelty, in briefhistory is possible at all, thenwe begin to doubt
disorder,change, transgression,
whether it can be Utopia after all..."196 Venn-Thomas thus acts as the opponent of
really

195Howard P. Segal, Technological in American Culture 19-32.

Utopianism (Chicago: Chicago UP, 1985),

196Fredric
Jameson, Of Islands and Trenches: Naturalization and the Production of Utopian Discourse,"
Diacritics 2:3 (1977), 16-17.

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ben-Yeshuvwho banned historyfromNew Crete by artificiallylirmtingit to a certainlevelof social
of history,though,bringsabout thedestruction
and technologicaldevelopment.The reintroduction
of the stableUtopian system.

Anti-utopian Elements

Graves' novel can be read as an anti-utopia in the true sense of the word. While dystopias
extrapolatedangerous tendenciesin thepresentby projecting them intoa nightmareworld of the
future, anti-utopias proper, such as Hawthorne's Blithedale Romance, directly question the very

possibility or even desirability of ever creating a Utopian society.197 While many Utopian travelers
are only initially skeptical about the Utopian society, Venn-Thomas remains so throughout the
entirebook: "Wnyhad I ever consentedto visit thisplace? Curiosityhad borne downmy common
sense; I didn't belong, and I dislikeUtopias" (89). Venn-Thomas eventuallylearns to appreciate
and even love some of the New Cretans, but he never loses his sense of irony. He nicknames a
member of the captains' estate "Nervo the Fearless," commenting that this man "might have

stepped straightout of an American comic strip"(55). Erica's cynical judgementon New Crete
echoes Venn-Thomas' anti-utopian stance: 'The life here's a little too good to be true, of course"
(71).
One major deviation fromthe solemnityofmany literaryutopias is thenarrator'ssense of humor.
Several of the scenes described inWatch theNorth Wind Rise are quite funny,and the joke is
always at the expense of the Utopian society. Shortly after Venn-Thomas awakens, for instance,
hemeets Quant, his firstUtopian guide. This standardscene turnsridiculouswhen Quant involves
Venn-Thomas in a pedantic discussion on the pronunciation of certain words in poems on
Christmas cards. A second example of the deflation of Utopian pomposity occurs
twentieth-century
when thewitch Sapphire attemptsto cast a spellon Venn-Thomas and he forcesher to invalidate
itby reversing her actions. The sightof a witch, starknaked and painted blue, runningbackwards
in circles,is certainlyone of theoddest inall of Utopian literature.Even more ludicrousis a scene
in the chapter "The Rising Wind." Venn-Thomas, en route to a cultic festival, talks to "Nervo the
Fearless" and accidentally mentions "Mother Carey's chickens." The supposedly fearless Nervo falls
to the ground and loses consciousness. It is only considerably later that Venn-Thomas is told that
he pronounced the "dreadfullysacredname" of thegoddess of thewind, and thatNervo was afraid
that theGoddess would blow him "overthemoon" (240). Luckily,Venn-Thomas thinksof saying
the name backward, and at the sound of these words Nervo revives. The New Cretans at times
not only appear to be too good, but also too foolish to be true.

A further reason for the destruction of new Crete is connected to the fact that the Goddess, as
Graves expanded at length in The White Goddess is also theMuse of all truepoets. While the
magicians of New Crete faithfully try to serve the Goddess, their poetry, as Venn-Thomas observes,
is rather insipid. Even their literary judgement is questionable,as the only poem by Venn-Thomas
includedin theNew Cretan canon (ironicallyattributedto thepoet "Tseliot") is one thathe himself
considered "artificial and insincere" (231). The utopia of poets lacks a true sense for poetry. On a
describes the conflictbetween opposing
meta-utopian level,Watch theNorth Wind Rise therefore
genres, between dramatic narratives and plotless utopias. A static society offers little to the poet,
and Venn-Thomas even observes that the people around him 'lacked the quality we prized as
character: the look of indornitability which comes from dire experiences nobly faced and overcome"
(12). This statement can be read as a general critique of typecast characters in Utopian literature.
Without the seedsof conflictintroducedby theprotagonist,theUtopian societylackswhat Graves
has called "the singlepoetic theme,"namely the interdependenceof love and death.198Watch the
North Wind Rise transcendsthe static felicityofmost literaryutopias by artificiallyintroducing
conflict and change, even at the cost of destroying the Utopian society in the process.

Ironicallythe destructionof this Utopian society is very beneficial forVenn-Thomas' personal

development. During his stayinNew Crete he had fallenin lovewith thenymphSapphire. After

197 Hans Ulrich Seeber, zur Gegenutopiet" Literarische von Morus bis zur
"Bemerkungen Utopien
Gegenwart, ed. Klaus Berghahn and Hans Ulrich Seeber (K?nigstein: Athen?um, 1983), 163.

*8The White Goddess, 8.

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 the jealousmagician Sally forcesSapphire to drinka lethe-likepotion, Sapphire loses hermemory
and is ritually reborn as the commoner Stormbird. Venn-Thomas takes Stormbird back to the past,
realizing in the end thathe has found in her thedaughterhe never had. The plot ofWatch the
North Wind Rise can be interpreted,as Robert Canary has pointed out, as the story of
Venn-Thomas7 choice between sexual passion (embodied in Erica and Sally) and married love,
represented by Sapphire and his wife Antonia.199 Graves thus rejects what Gary Saul Morson has
called the "counter-Bildungsroman" inherent in many Utopian narratives about "a hero who
discovers that theworld is not as complex as he had thought"in favorof a complex,open-ended
narrative.200

AmbiguousUtopias
While Graves7novel has receivedonly a fractionof theattentiongiven toGeorge Orwell'sNineteen
Eighty-Four,which was published in the same year, it should be regardedas a milestone in the
developmentof contemporaryUtopian fiction. It emphasizes an elementof ambiguitywhich was
alreadypresent inMore's Utopia with itspunningnames ("Hythloday"--tellerof nonsense), but had
been suppressed in many of the more dogmatic works of the genre. One can apply C.S. Lewis'
comment on More's Utopia to Watch theNorth Wind Rise; it is also "a holiday work, a
spontaneous overflow of intellectual high spirits, a revel of debate, paradox, comedy..."201 These
traits already point forwards to the ambiguous utopias of the nineteen-seventies. Texts such as
Joanna Russ' The Female Man, Marge Piercy's Woman on the Edge of Time, Ursula Le Guin's The
Dispossessed, Samuel Delany's Triton, and John Varley's "The Persistence of Vision" exhibit a
similardistrustof totalizingsolutionsand static systems. Like Watch theNorth Wind Rise, they
perform a constant deconstruction of their own Utopian systems, turning utopia into a never-ending
process. The orderand stability of traditionalUtopian systemshas become suspecttomanymodern
writers,as dystopias such as Eugene Zamiatin's We orAldous Huxley's BraveNew World depicted
worlds that were logical and stable, but nevertheless inhumane. Utopias of the nineteen-seventies
such as The Dispossessed (subtitledAn Ambiguous Utopia) or Triton (subtitledAn Ambiguous
Heterotopia) therefore not only depict de-centralizedand dynamic societies,but also foreground
theirown fictionality. Like Watch theNorth Wind Rise with itsnumerous referencesto other
fictional texts such as literary
utopias, Alice inWonderland, or Andersen's fairytales (224), these
ambiguous utopias employ intertextuality and irony to destroy the "apparently unified, illusionary,
and self-representational text of the more traditional utopia," thus compelling readers to perceive
the shortcornings of the Utopian system.202

Watch theNorth Wind Rise as a literary

If criticshave feltuneasy in categorizing utopia, it is not
the least because of this shift towards the ambiguous utopia. Graves' novel implies a caustic
critique of the modern belief in progress, which Venn-Thomas at one time defines as "a bumpy
journey to nowhere in particularconsideredas somehow better than theputative point of origin
only because it has not yet been reached..." (230) His description of New Crete is a Utopian
alternative to the modern cult of progress, and his poet-narrator (and probably many readers) can
see many advantages in a simpler, more ordered world. Graves, after all, is part of a well-established
traditionof pastoral utopias which includesMorris' News fromNowhere,W.H. Hudson's A Crystal
Age, as well as in recentyears SallyMiller Gearheart's TheWandergroundand Dorothy Bryant's
The Kin ofAta are Waitingfor You. Graves' trueachievement,however, liesnot in his rejection
utopias. Watch theNorth
of technology,but inhis recognitionof thedeficienciesof staticliterary
Wind Rise not only shows thedestructionof a stableUtopian society,but also indicatesthat literary
utopias as texts should not be interpreted as blueprintsfor a perfect society,but as temporary

?? Robert H.
Canary, Robert Graves (Boston: Twayne, 1980), 101-102.

200
Gary Saul Morson, The Boundaries of Genre. Dostoevsky's Diary of a Writer and the Traditions of
Literary Utopia (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1981), 78.

201CS.
Lewis, English Literature in the Sixteenth Century Excluding Drama. The Oxford History of English
Literature, vol. 3 (Oxford: Oxford UP, 1954), 169.

202Thomas and
Moylan, Demand the Impossible. Science Fiction the Utopian Imagination (New York:
Methuen, 1986), 46.

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constructs offering a new perspective on our own contemporary social problems. The year 1949,
then,did not mark the demise of utopia and its finaldisplacementby dystopian visions of Big
Brother,but heralded the coming of a newwave of Utopian fiction.While it is too early to deliver
a final evaluation of the ongoing renaissance of Utopian fiction, one can certainly say that Graves'
novel was ahead of its time.

Austin CommunityCollege

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