“O me! O me! How i love the earth”: William Morris’s News from Nowhere and the birth of sustainable society

Abstract

Arguing from an ecocritical perspective, in this article I seek to show that Morris, in his ‘green’ utopia News from Nowhere, envisaged a new social order in which communities are socially just, participatory, independent, economically viable and environmentally sustainable. I will argue that Morris, by stressing the need for a decentralized and polycentric country and by showing how co‐operation, as opposed to competition, can form a symbiosis between the members of the society, effectively linked the local with the global. I will show that Morris, turning against systematized globalization as portrayed in Edward Bellamy’s Looking Backward, gives an example of a ‘sustainable’ globalization that shares much common ground with the current politics of bioregionalism. I will finally suggest that Morris’s vision of London as an ecological city, where waste has been abolished and human beings live in harmony with nature while respecting social justice, is more urgent than ever and can be instrumental as a vision for our future life.

Keywords:

• Environmentalism
• Socialism
• Sustainability
• Anti‐globalization
• Bioregionalism
• Town Planning

Notes

Martin Delveaux has recently completed a PhD in the School of English at the University of Exeter (UK). His research focuses on the construction of nature in late Victorian fiction, with a special emphasis on ecocriticism, bioregionalism and utopianism.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Martin Delveaux

Martin Delveaux has recently completed a PhD in the School of English at the University of Exeter (UK). His research focuses on the construction of nature in late Victorian fiction, with a special emphasis on ecocriticism, bioregionalism and utopianism.