National internationalism in late 19th-century utopias by Mór Jókai, Edward Bellamy, and William Morris

Abstract

The paper looks at two major representatives of fin-de-siècle utopian fiction, Edward Bellamy’s 1888 Looking Backward 2000–1887, William Morris’s 1890 News from Nowhere, and an earlier work by the Hungarian novelist Mór Jókai, The Novel of the Century to Come (A jövő század regénye, 1872–1874). I examine their various strategies regarding the spatial and historical aspects of utopian transformation as well as their respective positions toward the relation of commerce and community. On the whole, I suggest that the pattern of nationally informed or biased internationalism that seems to underlie all three novels might be traced back to the enlightened concept of patriotic cosmopolitanism.