ROMANTIC AND MARXIST UTOPIA OF WILLIAM MORRIS: AESTHETICS, ECONOMICS AND ECOLOGY IN NEWS FROM NOWHERE

Abstract

Europe in the nineteenth century spawned many utopias with diverse schemes and outlooks, among which William Morris's News from Nowhere (1890) holds a special place. The brainchild of the great Marxist poet, artist and writer of the century, News from Nowhere offers a distinctive summation of Morris's extraordinary blend of Romanticism and Marxism, which is filtered through his multiple lenses of aesthetics, economy and ecology. The following article is a modest attempt at explicating the dynamics of his utopia through the depiction of the different dimensions of his Marxist and Romantic ideas as developed and illustrated in the book in relation to art/aesthetics and labor/economy.