2007-08 MM 18th- and 19th-Century Futures

• Time: Thu 12-14
• Place: S2 203
• Contact: Olaf Simons

The twentieth century brought forth a wave of books and movies dealing with the future. "Science fiction" reads the label that detects the sciences as the primary source of inspiration shaping this production.

The seminar will go back to early fictions of times to come. The sciences, this will be an immediate result, did not motivate the early authors. Samuel Madden, writing in 1733, could hardly imagine a future marked by entirely different technologies. New mental states are of interest to Sebastien Mercier, the author of the 1770s. A gloomy catastrophe becomes the scenario of Mary Shelley's Last Man in 1828. Late 19th century authors - like Edward Bellamy and H. G. Wells - offer the futures we have become used to.

We will read the 18th- and 19th-century titles mentioned with an interest in the cultures they reflect. The future - this will be one of the premises of this seminar - is no natural thing to consider. It is rather a ground of debate developing its own logic with the histories we came to write.

Seminar work will focus on the texts listed bellow. How do these titles compare with 20th-century science fiction? How far are they influenced by ideas of (technological) progress? To what extend did they need comparable histories of the past to become plausible? How do other considerations of the future from astrology to religion compare to the new fictional production developing with these texts?

Oct 25 2007: Brainstorming

How did the future - how did the past develop - a broad survey.

Nov 1, 2007: Samuel Madden, Memoirs of the 20th Century (1733)

• William Salmon, The London almanack for the year of our Lord 1694 (1694). EEBO

Read chapter XIII, the "Explanation of the Hieroglyphs". How is the interest in the future structured? What is more and what is less interesting?

• Samuel Madden, Memoirs of the Twentieth Century (1733). ECCO

Take a look through title page and dedication, read the preface and the first letter. You may either read the ECCO online edition or download the pdf I'll put on our server. I shall try to provide a text edition in cooperation with the Druckzentrum.

Nov 8, 2007: Samuel Madden, Memoirs of the 20th Century (1733)

We will split Madden's book into as many parts as we are participants and piece it together. Get an awareness of where this future differs from the world of 1733.

Nov 22, 2007: Louis-Sébastien Mercier, Memoirs of the year two thousand five hundred (1771)

• Louis-Sébastien Mercier, Memoirs of the year two thousand five hundred. [1771] translated from the French by W. Hooper (London: G. Robinson, 1772). ECCO

Feb 6, 2008: H. G. Wells, Time Machine (1895)

Texts

• Samuel Madden. Memoirs of the 20th cenury. London, 1731. ECCO
• Louis-Sébastien Mercier, Memoirs of the year two thousand five hundred. [1771] translated from the French by W. Hooper (London: G. Robinson, 1772). ECCO
• Mary Shelley. The Last Man [1828]. Edited with an Introduction and Notes by Morton D. Paley. Oxford: OUP, 1998.
• Edward Bellamy. Looking Backward from 2000 to 1887. 1888.
• H. G. Wells. Time Machine. 1895.

Links

• http://books.guardian.co.uk/authors/author/0,,-139,00.html zur Guardian H.G. Wells Site
• http://www.fantasticfiction.co.uk/w/h-g-wells/ - zur Fantastic Fiction Wells Seite mit Bibliographie:
• http://unmuseum.mus.pa.us/wow.htm zu einem Artikel über Orson Welles und das Mercury Theatre
• http://www.hgwellsusa.50megs.com/ zur H.G. Wells Society