Anti-utopian Mood, Liminality, and Literature. Irma Ratiani

Anti-utopian Mood, Liminality, and Literature - Irma Ratiani


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in the country were disjointed and disordered. Not everyone could have resisted the ongoing political process with their creative work, but those who managed to do so were violently punished. Among them was the classic of Georgian literature – Mikheil Javakhishvili, a writer who chose freedom of creativity over slavery. He worked with great success on the verge of High Modernism and Realism and was able to give a depth of anti-utopian mood to his main text – “Jakho’s Dispossessed" (“Jakhos Khiznebi”). This novel reveals the versatility of the writer’s work and puts Georgian literature of that period on par with European and World literature, where the anti-utopian mood as well as the formation of rebellious characters against the hateful order has been started. Consequently, this book is a first attempt to read one of the most prominent Georgian texts in the wide context of anti-utopian thinking.

      Definition of literary anti-utopia, its genre specificity and peculiarities, is one of the important problems of contemporary literary studies. Expansion of literary research in this direction was caused by a highly significant characteristic of this problem: the essential role and function of anti-utopian thinking have been clearly demonstrated in the formation of art and literature of the 20th century.

      My desire to bring together the two outstanding writers of the 20th century has its reasons. One of those writers is an international celebrity and the other is a victim of the “unread problem” of small literatures, such as Georgian, and their unification under the umbrella of anti-utopia strengthens the authority of anti-utopia as a large-scale literary phenomenon and provides with an opportunity to expand the history of a particular literary genre in the direction of Georgian literature.

      I hope that this work will contribute to getting to know modern Georgian literature better and stimulate further academic discussions on the topic.

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      The importance of anti-utopia as a form of thinking for 20th-century literature and art could be described as one of the most determinant models for 20th-century aesthetics.

      What is anti-utopia and what are the theoretical and methodological aspects of interpreting it? What are the genre-defining parameters of anti-utopia and how are they realized in literary text? Is it possible or not to highlight the chronotopic categories in the context of literary anti-utopia?

      The questions outlined above are rather timely for modern literary studies, and settling those problems will shed light on the researches dealing with 20th-century anti-utopian novel.

      One aspect should be put forward: the anti-utopian model of thinking is closely linked with the utopian model. This is why I gain an in-depth understanding of the problem deeply which we


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