Brave New World by
Now more than ever: Aldous Huxley's enduring "masterpiece ... one of the most prophetic dystopian works of the 20th century" (Wall Street Journal) must be read and understood by anyone concerned with preserving the human spirit in the face of our "brave new world" Aldous Huxley's profoundly important classic of world literature, Brave New World is a searching vision of an unequal, technologically-advanced future where humans are genetically bred, socially indoctrinated, and pharmaceutically anesthetized to passively uphold an authoritarian ruling order--all at the cost of our freedom, full humanity, and perhaps also our souls. "A genius [who] who spent his life decrying the onward march of the Machine" (The New Yorker), Huxley was a man of incomparable talents: equally an artist, a spiritual seeker, and one of history's keenest observers of human nature and civilization. Brave New World, his masterpiece, has enthralled and terrified millions of readers, and retains its urgent relevance to this day as both a warning to be heeded as we head into tomorrow and as thought-provoking, satisfying work of literature. Written in the shadow of the rise of fascism during the 1930s, Brave New World likewise speaks to a 21st-century world dominated by mass-entertainment, technology, medicine and pharmaceuticals, the arts of persuasion, and the hidden influence of elites. "Aldous Huxley is the greatest 20th century writer in English." --Chicago Tribune This book also includes the full text of Brave New World Revisited, Huxley's 1958 nonfiction followup to Brave New World.
Brave New World by
Now more than ever: Aldous Huxley's enduring "masterpiece ... one of the most prophetic dystopian works of the 20th century" (Wall Street Journal) must be read and understood by anyone concerned with preserving the human spirit in the face of our "brave new world" Aldous Huxley's profoundly important classic of world literature, Brave New World is a searching vision of an unequal, technologically-advanced future where humans are genetically bred, socially indoctrinated, and pharmaceutically anesthetized to passively uphold an authoritarian ruling order--all at the cost of our freedom, full humanity, and perhaps also our souls. "A genius [who] who spent his life decrying the onward march of the Machine" (The New Yorker), Huxley was a man of incomparable talents: equally an artist, a spiritual seeker, and one of history's keenest observers of human nature and civilization. Brave New World, his masterpiece, has enthralled and terrified millions of readers, and retains its urgent relevance to this day as both a warning to be heeded as we head into tomorrow and as thought-provoking, satisfying work of literature. Written in the shadow of the rise of fascism during the 1930s, Brave New World likewise speaks to a 21st-century world dominated by mass-entertainment, technology, medicine and pharmaceuticals, the arts of persuasion, and the hidden influence of elites. "Aldous Huxley is the greatest 20th century writer in English." --Chicago Tribune
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Aldous Huxley : The Political Thought of a Man of Letters
Aldous Huxley: The Political Thought of a Man of Letters argues that Huxley is not a man of letters engaged in politics, but a political thinker who chooses literature to spread his ideas. His preference for the dystopian genre is due to his belief in the tremendous impact of dystopia on twentieth-century political thought. His political thinking is not systematic, but this does not stop his analysis from supplying elements that are original and up-to-date, and that represent fascinating contributions of political theory in all the spheres that he examines from anti-Marxism to anti-positivism, from political realism to elitism, from criticism of mass society to criticism of totalitarianism, from criticism of ideologies to the future of liberal democracy, from pacifism to ecological communitarianism. Huxley clearly grasped the unsolved issues of contemporary liberalism, and the importance of his influence on many twentieth-century and present-day political thinkers ensures that his ideas remain indispensable in the current liberal-democratic debate. Brave New World is without doubt Huxley's most successful political manifesto. While examining the impassioned struggle for the development of all human potentialities, it yet manages not to close the doors definitively on the rebirth of utopia in the age of dystopia.
Aldous Huxley and Alternative Spirituality
Aldous Huxley and Alternative Spirituality offers an incisive analysis of the full range of Huxley's spiritual interests, spanning both mysticism (neo-Vedanta, Taoism, Mahayana and Zen Buddhism) and Western esotericism (mesmerism, spiritualism, the paranormal). Jake Poller examines how Huxley's shifting spiritual convictions influenced his fiction, such as his depiction of the body and sex, and reveals how Huxley's use of psychedelic substances affected his spiritual convictions, resulting in a Tantric turn in his work. Poller demonstrates how Huxley's vision of a new alternative spirituality in Island, in which the Palanese select their beliefs from different religious traditions, anticipates the New Age spiritual supermarket and traces the profound influence of Huxley's ideas on the spiritual seekers of the twentieth century and beyond.
Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
- Critical essays reflecting a variety of schools of criticism. - Notes on the contributing critics, a chronology of the author's life, and an index. - An introductory essay by Harold Bloom.
Critical Insights: Conspiracies State Conspiracies in Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, Thomas Horan
Conspiracies-and the secrecy, plotting and unlawfulness that accompany them-have played a prominent role in human interaction and are featured in literature from the Bible to Shakespeare to Dan Brown's Da Vinci Code. This volume explores touchstone moments in conspiracy fiction and delves into the socio-political aspects of conspiracies while examining them at the heart of some of the most beloved canonical literature in the English language.
Critical Insights Dystopia: “They Got Me a Long Time Ago”: The Sympathetic Villain in Nineteen Eighty-Four, Brave New World, and Fahrenheit 451
Dystopia(n) Matters : On the Page, on Screen, on Stage
Human Nature and Politics in Utopian and Anti-Utopian Fiction: 3 Technology and Human Nature in Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World
While the interest in anti-utopias has exploded over the years, issues of human nature rarely make it into the discussion of these works of literature. Yet conceptions of human nature play a key role in both the utopian belief that the perfect political system can be achieved and in the anti-utopian conviction that an ideal state is neither possible nor desirable, and would simply lead to a repressive state. This book examines two well-known utopias and two anti-utopias to draw out their conceptions of human nature and show that these conceptions are directly related to their views on politics. It shows that utopians emphasize that human nature is knowable, predictable, and therefore, open to manipulation and/or suppression. Anti-utopians, on the other hand, make the claim that human nature is not entirely knowable or predictable. While they worry about the power of the state to manipulate human nature, they also make the case that the natural recalcitrance and unpredictability of human beings would lead inevitably to a search for freedom and individuality and, therefore, to a clash between the state and the individual in the supposedly ideal state. Ultimately, therefore, these anti-utopians suggest a new conception of human beings as people who value the power to choose their own ends and are unable to entirely suppress their desire for freedom. These two conceptions of human nature lead to two dramatically different conceptions of politics. Utopians see the possibility of manipulating human nature to create an ideal political system which synthesizes all political values and issues while anti-utopians reject both the possibility and desirability of an ideal political system and make the case for providing freedom of choice for all people.
Imagining Surveillance : Utopian and Dystopian Literature and Film
Wandering into Brave New World
Wandering into Brave New World explores the historical contexts and contemporary sources of Aldous Huxley's 1932 novel which, seventy years after its initial publication remains the best known and most discussed dystopian work of the twentieth century. This new study addresses a number of questions which still remain open. Did his round-the-world trip in 1925-1926 provide material for the novel? Did India's caste system contribute to the novel's human levels? Is there an overarching pattern to the names of the novel/s characters? Has the role of Hollywood in the novel been underestimated? Is Lenina Crown a representative 1920s "flapper"? Did Huxley have knowledge of and sources for his Indian reservation characters and scenes quite independent of and more accurate than those of D. H. Lawrence's writings? Did Huxley's visit to Borneo contribute anything to the novel? New research allows substantive answers and even explains why Huxley linked such figures as Henry Ford and Sigmund Freud. It also shows how the novel overcomes its intense grounding in 1920s political turmoil to escape into the timelessness of dystopian fiction.
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Aldous Huxley : a collection of critical essays
Critical essays examine the impact and influence of Huxley's early novels and poems and explore the later stages of his career.
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