The Political Kinetics of H. G. Wells’s Scientific Romances: The Time Machine and The Invisible Man
0
조회
0
다운로드
2
인용
0
참고문헌
키워드
초록
Due to their eccentric and often controversial nature, H. G. Wells’s political writings have often been treated separately from his enormously popular scientific romances, and this trend ends up creating what Robert Shelton calls “two Wellses” in “Wellsian scholarship.” This paper, however, argues that there is an enduring relationship between Wells’s scientific romances and political writings. The former, which appeared early in his career, serve as a testing ground, where Wells experiments with his political ideas, and thus prove that there is a political kinetics working throughout his both literary and political writings. To illustrate this political kinetics, the paper examines two of Wells’s most famous scientific romances−The Time Machine and The Invisible Man−and argues that from these romances, he develops his political ideas that reject both democracy and capitalism. In The Time Machine, Wells highlights the importance of the unique and criticizes the tendency of democracy to neutralize the unique under the name of equality. Showing the dystopian future where the unique is eradicated, and also exiling the Time Traveller who, despite being unique, shares the dangerous democratic tendency, Wells expresses his disapproval of democracy, and this disapproval later develops into his political idea of the World State, where a small group of elites called the Samurai rule the world. In The Invisible Man, Wells conducts a critique of capitalism, especially of the power of money, that shows resemblance to Karl Marx’s critique of modern capitalism. Griffin the invisible man literally personifies the invisible power of money and acts in a way that is similar to that of a corrupted capitalist. By dispatching Griffin, Wells shows his distaste for such a capitalist and, by extension, capitalism, but he diverges from Marx in that he later decides to entrust the Samurai, not the proletariat, with the power of money and subsequently utopian economy.
Abstract
Due to their eccentric and often controversial nature, H. G. Wells’s political writings have often been treated separately from his enormously popular scientific romances, and this trend ends up creating what Robert Shelton calls “two Wellses” in “Wellsian scholarship.” This paper, however, argues that there is an enduring relationship between Wells’s scientific romances and political writings. The former, which appeared early in his career, serve as a testing ground, where Wells experiments with his political ideas, and thus prove that there is a political kinetics working throughout his both literary and political writings. To illustrate this political kinetics, the paper examines two of Wells’s most famous scientific romances−The Time Machine and The Invisible Man−and argues that from these romances, he develops his political ideas that reject both democracy and capitalism. In The Time Machine, Wells highlights the importance of the unique and criticizes the tendency of democracy to neutralize the unique under the name of equality. Showing the dystopian future where the unique is eradicated, and also exiling the Time Traveller who, despite being unique, shares the dangerous democratic tendency, Wells expresses his disapproval of democracy, and this disapproval later develops into his political idea of the World State, where a small group of elites called the Samurai rule the world. In The Invisible Man, Wells conducts a critique of capitalism, especially of the power of money, that shows resemblance to Karl Marx’s critique of modern capitalism. Griffin the invisible man literally personifies the invisible power of money and acts in a way that is similar to that of a corrupted capitalist. By dispatching Griffin, Wells shows his distaste for such a capitalist and, by extension, capitalism, but he diverges from Marx in that he later decides to entrust the Samurai, not the proletariat, with the power of money and subsequently utopian economy.
참고문헌 (30)
- Brantlinger, Patrick, "Waste and Value: Thorstein Veblen and H. G. Wells", Criticism, 48(4), pp.453~475 (2006)
- Brome, Vincent, "H. G. Wells as a Controversialist", The University of Windsor Review, 2(2), pp.31~45 (1967)
- Cantor, Paul A, "The Invisible Man and the Invisible Hand: H. G. Wells’s Critique of Capitalism", The American Scholar, 68, pp.89~102 (1999)
- Costa, Richard Hauer, "H. G. Wells, Revised Edition" (1985), Boston: Twayne Publishers
- DePaolo, Charles, "The Time Machine and the Descent of Man", Foundation, 85, pp.66~79 (2002)
- Earle, Edward Mead, "H. G. Wells, British Patriot in Search of a World State", World Politics, 2(2), pp.181~208 (1950)
- Firchow, Peter Edgerly, "Modern Utopian Fictions: from H. G. Wells to Iris Murdoch" (2007), Washington D. C.: The Catholic University America Press
- Huntington, John, "The Time Machine and Wells’s Social Trajectory", Foundation, 65, pp.6~15 (1995)
- Hyde, William J, "The Socialism of H. G. Wells in the Early Twentieth Century", Journal of the History of Ideas, 17(2), pp.217~234 (1956)
- Ingle, Stephen, "The Political Writing of H. G. Wells", Queen’s Quarterly, 81, pp.396~411 (1974)
- Kintzele, Jeff, "Man, Money, and Time. Logic of Credit: Logic of Modernity", Design Issues, 4(1), pp.131~140 (1988)
- Mandel, Ernest, "Introduction. Capital: A Critique of Political Economy by Karl Marx. Vol. 1" (1990), New York: Penguin Books
- Marx, Karl, "Capital: A Critique of Political Economy. Vol. 1" (1990), New York: Penguin Books
- Miller, John J, "War of the Worldviews. The Wall Street Journal", The Wall Street Journal (2008)
- Parrinder, Patrick, "Shadows of the Future: H. G. Wells, Science Fiction, and Prophecy" (1995), Syracuse: Syracuse UP
- Partington, John, "The Time Machine: A Polemic on the Inevitability of Working Class Liberation and a Plea for a Socialist Solution to Late-Victorian Capitalist Exploitation", The Wellsian, 19, pp.12~21 (1996)
- Pearson, Richard, "Primitive Modernity: H. G. Wells and the Prehistoric Man of the 1890s", The Yearbook of English Studies, 37(1), pp.58~74 (2007)
- Sargent, Lyman Tower, "The Time Machine in the Development of Wells’s Social and Political Thought", The Wellsian, 19, pp.3~11 (1996)
- Shelton, Robert, "Locating The Time Machine within (and Beyond) the Bergonzi", Wagar Debate, 2002, pp.1, 29~42
- Sirabian, Robert, "The Conception of Science in Wells’s The Invisible Man", Language and Literature, 30, pp.382~403 (2001)
- Stover, Leon, "Introduction. The Invisible Man: A Grotesque Romance by H. G. Wells" (1998), North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers
- Stover, Leon, "Wells’s Communist Revision, Perestroika, and the New World Order", The Wellsian, 15, pp.25~34 (1992)
- Suvin, Darko, "Wells as the Turning Point of the SF Tradition in Critical Essays on H. G. Wells" (1991), Boston: G. K. Hall & Co
- Tuerk, Richard, "Upper-Middle-Class Madness: H. G. Wells’s Time Traveller Journeys to Wonderland", Extrapolation, 46(4), pp.517~526 (2005)
- Wagar, W. Warren, "H. G. Wells and the World State" (1971), NY: Books for Libraries Press
- Wells, H. G, "Democracy under Revision" (1927), London: Leonard & Virginia Woolf at the Hogarth Press
- Wells, H. G, "The Invisible Man: A Grotesque Romance" (1998), North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers
- Wells, H. G, "Modern Utopia" (1967), Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press
- Wells, H. G, "Rediscovery of the Unique", Fortnightly Review (1891): n. pag. Gaslight. Web, ~ (2011)
- Wells, H. G, "The Time Machine: An Invention" (1996), McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers