“The Utopia is a form of satire, & what it satirizes is anarchy. It flourishes when we feel afraid of anarchy, as in 19th c. laissez faire. If we feel more afraid of order, the anti-Utopia results. Bellamy’s Looking Backward would, or certainly coud, be read today as a rather sinister book. Houston has no zoning laws: that indicates a strongly anti-Utopian sentiment in Houston; but no doubt Houston is building thruways & clover leafs & sewers and telephone exchanges on a vast Utopian scale.”

“The combination of aristocratic (Wells’ samurai) and revolutionary ideals makes the Utopia romance, a vision of society with the irony omitted. Hence the FQ [The Faerie Queene] is Utopian, & the university or educational ideal is linked with the relation of the Utopia to the Cyropaedia, as well as the Symposium-Cortegiano tradition.”