Novel, Utopia, Nation: A History of Interdependence

Abstract

"one must reject the assumption that the novel and narrative utopia are two parallel, antinomic institutions that converge only abstractly, only as contemporaneous elements of that vast territory we call modernity, and try to write a history of their interdependence. This history, as Philip Wegner’s detailed and sophisticated Imaginary Communities demonstrates, materializes through a shared relation to that inescapable modern macro-institution called the nation."