Böcker av Artur Blaim

Gazing in Useless Wonder focuses on utopias as self-referential texts that literally have to constitute themselves as imaginary or intentional entities before they can work as vehicles for socio-political ideas. Foregrounding the construction of utopian fictions defines both the perspective and the differentiation of the analytically significant elements, so that the traditionally dominant topics such as the nature and origins of the ideologies behind the construction of the ideal model are taken into account only insofar as they contribute to the aesthetic effect of the utopian construct as a whole. The organising principle of the early modern utopia involves two different modes of presentation: the narrative frame and the ekphrastic description of the ideal state, each possessing an aesthetic function realised according to different principles, with the ideal image constructed in accordance with the dominant aesthetic norms of the period pertaining to the visual arts, such as harmony, symmetry, alleged perfection, and timelessness. Despite variations, especially in the thematic-ideological domain, the dominant genre pattern that emerged as a result of the simplification of the complex semantics of Thomas More's Utopia in the early modern period is taken here as forming a single synchrony in the history of utopian fiction-making.

The book is a study of the eighteenth-century English robinsonade focusing on the pre-history of the genre, the multi-level semantics of "Robinson Crusoe", its functioning as a genre model, and the subsequent process of its simplification by the gradual elimination of religious meanings and foregrounding the exciting adventures.

The book employs the concepts of utopia, dystopia, and anti-utopia in the analysis of a variety of phenomena such as literature, cinema, rock music, literary/cultural theories, as well as the practice of literature (socialist realism) and socio-political life.