ABSTRACT
The literary utopia, argues Tom Moylan in Demand the Impossible, is a form which is particularly suited to periods of rapid social change and uncertainty. It enables the reader to consider ‘what is and what is not yet achieved’, by envisioning an alternative society distant from the author’s own in time or space (Moylan 1986, 3). Moylan suggests that such utopias may be other worlds, past or future societies or, as in the case of Thomas More’s Utopia, remote islands (3). The locations Moylan proposes are all closed spaces, impermeable to external influences which would potentially dilute their difference, and so these locations remain ‘elsewhere’, if not quite the ‘nowhere’ that the name of More’s fictional island implies. In the globalised and postmodern contemporary world which, as Fredric Jameson points out, it is difficult for any individual to comprehend in its totality and locate their position within (1991, 34-35), the appeal of these bounded, easilydefined, alternative territories may be particularly strong. Given the complexity of factors affecting climate change, the utopian appeal of a small and clearly defined place may increase even further if its society can suggest a more environmentally friendly model for interactions between humans and their environment. However, as predictions of the effects of climate change make the future appear increasingly bleak, the temptation is to locate this utopia in the pastoral past.
