Political fiction
Plato's Republic, a Socratic dialogue written around 380 BC, has been one of the world's most influential works of philosophy and political theory, both intellectually and historically.
[4] Other influential politically themed works include Thomas More's Utopia (1516), Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels (1726), Voltaire's Candide (1759), and Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852).
This includes totalitarian dystopias of the early 20th century such as Jack London's The Iron Heel, Sinclair Lewis' It Can't Happen Here, and George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four.
Jonathan Swift's A Modest Proposal (1729) is an 18th-century Juvenalian satirical essay in which he suggests that the impoverished Irish might ease their economic troubles by selling their children as food for rich gentlemen and ladies.
George Orwell's Animal Farm (1945) is an allegorical and dystopian novella which satirises the Russian Revolution of 1917 and the Soviet Union's Stalinist era.
Orwell's most famous work, however, is Nineteen Eighty-Four (published in 1949), many of whose terms and concepts, such as Big Brother, doublethink, thoughtcrime, Newspeak, Room 101, telescreen, 2 + 2 = 5, and memory hole, have entered into common use.
Nineteen Eighty-Four popularised the adjective "Orwellian", which describes official deception, secret surveillance, and manipulation of recorded history by a totalitarian or authoritarian state.
[14] The poet Jan Kochanowski's play The Dismissal of the Greek Envoys (1578), the first tragedy written in the Polish language, recounts an incident leading up to the Trojan War.
He explains to More how their entire philosophy is to find happiness and share everything collectively; in this society, money does not exist, which starkly contrasts with the ascendant commercial empires in Thomas More's Europe.
The comedy pits proponents against opponents of political reforms: of abolishing the destabilizing free election of Poland's kings; of abolishing the legislatively destructive liberum veto; of granting greater rights to peasants and townspeople; of curbing the privileges of the mostly self-interested noble class; and of promoting a more active Polish role in international affairs, in the interest of stopping the depredations of Poland's neighbors, Russia, Prussia, and Austria (who will in 1795 complete the dismemberment of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth).
With Coningsby; or, The New Generation (1844), Disraeli, in historian Robert Blake's view, "infused the novel genre with political sensibility, espousing the belief that England's future as a world power depended not on the complacent old guard, but on youthful, idealistic politicians.
[21] The Polish writer Bolesław Prus' novel, Pharaoh (1895), is set in the Egypt of 1087–85 BCE as that country experiences internal stresses and external threats that will culminate in the fall of its Twentieth Dynasty and New Kingdom.
Prus' vision of the fall of an ancient civilization derives some of its power from the author's intimate awareness of the final demise of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth in 1795, a century before he completed Pharaoh.
[30] The Gay Place (1961) is a set of politically themed novellas with interlocking plots and characters by American author Billy Lee Brammer.
Set in historical Segou (now part of Mali), the novels examine the violent legacies of the slave trade, Islam, Christianity, and colonization (from 1797 to 1860).
[38][39] A bold critic of the presidency of Nicolas Sarkozy, French novelist Marie Ndiayes won the Prix Goncourt for "Three Strong Women"(2009) about patriarchal control.
The intention of the writers of proletarian literature is to lift the workers from the slums by inspiring them to embrace the possibilities of social change or of a political revolution.
[45] More specific examples of social problems that are addressed in such works include poverty, conditions in factories and mines, the plight of child labor, violence against women, rising criminality, and epidemics caused by overcrowding and poor sanitation in cities.
Karl Marx asserted that Dickens "issued to the world more political and social truths than have been uttered by all the professional politicians, publicists and moralists put together".
[49][50] Charles Dickens's Hard Times (1854) is set in a small Midlands industrial town and particularly criticizes the effect of Utilitarianism on the lives of cities' working classes.
