Atlantis

A guide and companion to the prehistoric archaeology of Greece, this text is designed for students, travelers, and the general reader. It describes the prehistoric cultures of Greece and illustrates each culture's typical artifacts and architecture.

This is a study of the manner in which certain mythical notions of the world become accepted as fact. Dathorne shows how particular European concepts such as El Dorado, the Fountain of Youth, a race of Amazons, and monster (including cannibal) images were first associated with the Orient. After the New World encounter they were repositioned to North and South America. The book examines the way in which Arabs and Africans are conscripted into the view of the world and takes an unusual, non-Eurocentric viewpoint of how Africans journeyed to the New World and Europe, participating in, what may be considered, an early stage of world exploration and "discovery." The study concludes by looking at European travel literature from the early journeys of St. Brendan, through the Viking voyages and up to Marco Polo and Sir John Mandeville. In all these instances, the encounters seem to justify mythical belief. Dathorne's interest in the subject is both intellectual and passionate since, coming from Guyana, he was very much part of this malformed Weltschmerz.

With the publication of Utopia (1516), Thomas More provided a scathing analysis of the shortcomings of his own society, a realistic suggestion for an alternative mode of social organization, and a satire on unrealistic idealism. Enormously influential, it remains a challenging as well as a playful text. This edition reprints Ralph Robinson's 1556 translation from More's original Latin together with letters and illustrations that accompanied early editions of Utopia. This edition also includes two other, hitherto less accessible, utopian narratives. New Atlantis (1627) offers a fictional illustration of Francis Bacon's visionary ideal of the role that science should play in the modern society. Henry Neville's The Isle of Pines (1668), a precursor of Defoe's Robinson Crusoe, engages with some of the sexual, racial, and colonialist anxieties of the end of the early modern period. Bringing together these three New World texts, and situating them in a wider Renaissance context, this edition--which includes letters, maps, and alphabets that accompanied early editions--illustrates the diversity of the early modern utopian imagination, as well as the different purposes to which it could be put.

Stiebing highlights the exploits of colorful, dynamic excavators from the "Heroic Age" in an entertaining, informative account.

During the first part of the 19th century, the Lost Worlds Romance, a new literary form, appeared in which an explorer, most often a scientist, made a voyage to what was then considered to be a remote part of the earth where he discovered a fantastic lost world. This book surveys the Lost Worlds Romance from its beginnings, as it evolved from travel literature and utopian fiction, to its eclipse when there were no more unexplored corners of the earth and it took to the stars, evolving into modern science fiction.

Successful businessman David M. Parry wrote The Scarlet Empire in 1906, a time when dystopian and utopian novels were sufficiently popular in the United States and Great Britain that dozens were published in each country. Utopian fiction described perfect societies, usually socialistic and communitarian. Dystopian novels depicted degenerate societies, often occurring from the same approaches.

In their introduction to this reprint, historians Jerome M. Clubb and Howard W. Allen argue that Parry's novel and others like it display the opinions, feelings, and reactions of different sects of society at the turn of the century. Rapid changes in the United States caused mixed emotions about the future of the country. Many novels like The Scarlet Empire were used to criticize current measures, investigate proposed reform, and show these proposals in either a negative or a positive light.

One of the most popular utopian novels of the time, Edward Bellamy's Looking Backward, was written with the intention of promoting the reconciliation of equality and liberty. Bellamy's novel advocated a socialist government, a perfect utopian society with equality for men, women, and children, consolidated businesses, and strict government control. Clubb and Allen observe that these changes directly reflect reforms that were being proposed by the younger generation at the turn of the century.

The Scarlet Empire is said to be a direct response to Looking Backward. It is intended as a supplemental text in American history, American studies, and popular culture courses. Eight original illustrations by Hermann C. Wall enhance the text.