Aldous Huxley &Brave New World
“Oh, Brave New World that has such people in it!”
Aldous Huxley
Born British but moved to California
Was a journalist and a symbolist poet early in his career
Aldous Huxley
Became a “prophet of doom for the cult of the amusing”—moved away from realism to make ideas the central point in his stories
Scrutinized moral decadence of modern society’s effect on the “whole” man. (D.H. Lawrence?)
Aldous Huxley
Brave New World (1932) abandoned his view of evil as a “mildly amusing social phenomenon” and identified it with materialism and sensuality
Aldous Huxley
Wrote a pseudo-sequel—Brave New World Revisited, a diatribe against overpopulation and over consumption.
Died Nov. 22, 1963—the same day JFK was assassinated.
UTOPIA
A fiction describing an ideal imaginary world.
From Sir Thomas More’s Utopia written in Latin in 1516 describing a perfect political state
Literally means “good place”
DYSTOPIALiterally “bad place”Imaginary worlds, usually in the future, that
are less than idealPresent tendencies are carried out to their
intensely unpleasant culminationsMost famous dystopic stories are George
Orwell’s 1984, & Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World.
Other dystopic novels and works:
Harry Harrison’s Make Room! Make Room! (Soylent Green)
Other dystopic novels and works:
Phillip K. Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (Blade Runner)
Other dystopic novels and works:
William F. Nolan and George Clayton Johnson’s Logan’s Run
Other dystopic novels and works:
Alan Moore and David Lloyd’s V for Vendetta
Other dystopic novels and works:
The Matrix
NOBLE SAVAGE
The idea that primitive human beings are naturally good and that whatever evil they develop is the product of the corrupting action of civilization.
“Everything is well when it comes fresh from the hands of the Maker; everything degenerates in the hand of Man.” Rousseau
NOBLE SAVAGE
Major works that include the noble savage:Edgar Rice Burroughs’
Tarzan of the ApesRudyard Kipling’s MowgliRobert E. Howard’s Conan
the Barbarian
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