On "Nineteen Eighty-Four" : Orwell and Our Future
Editorial Reviews
Review
Robert Weisberg, Stanford Law School : A very strong and attractive work, On Nineteen Eighty-Four is a fresh and frontal confrontation of the question of whether Orwell had it right about technology and totalitarianism--or whether the usual clichés and stereotypes about the Orwellian view are right. The result is a very engaging body of thought.
Book Description
George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four is among the most widely read books in the world. For more than 50 years, it has been regarded as a morality tale for the possible future of modern society, a future involving nothing less than extinction of humanity itself. Does Nineteen Eighty-Four remain relevant in our new century? The editors of this book assembled a distinguished group of philosophers, literary specialists, political commentators, historians, and lawyers and asked them to take a wide-ranging and uninhibited look at that question. The editors deliberately avoided Orwell scholars in an effort to call forth a fresh and diverse range of responses to the major work of one of the most durable literary figures among twentieth-century English writers.
As Nineteen Eighty-Four protagonist Winston Smith has admirers on the right, in the center, and on the left, the contributors similarly represent a wide range of political, literary, and moral viewpoints. The Cold War that has so often been linked to Orwell's novel ended with more of a whimper than a bang, but most of the issues of concern to him remain alive in some form today: censorship, scientific surveillance, power worship, the autonomy of art, the meaning of democracy, relations between men and women, and many others. The contributors bring a variety of insightful and contemporary perspectives to bear on these questions.
On "Nineteen Eighty-Four": Orwell and Our Future,Abbott Gleason,Jack Goldsmith,Martha C. Nussbaum,Princeton University Press,0691113610,1903-1950,Dystopias in literature,English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh,Essays,History and criticism,Literature - Classics / Criticism,Nineteen eighty-four,Orwell, George,,Political Science,Politics/International Relations,Science fiction, English,British Isles,British Literature,Cultural studies,English,Law,Novels, other prose & writers: from c 1900 -,Political Philosophy,Political Science / Essays,Political Science and International Relations
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