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ReviewsThe Social Affairs Unit - Web Review: Going Nowhere: Samuel ... Editorial Review - socialaffairsunit.org.uk When last heard of he is in the process of setting up an Erewhon ... Erewhon is about to experience the hurricane force of Globalisation Phase One . ... User Review - cesarroblez [Flag as inappropriate] Write reviewSi el lector ha leído LOS VIAJES DE GUILLVER, tendrá una idea bastante aproximada de lo que es este libro y de sus motivaciones. En esencia trata de las aventuras de un emprendedor innominado que, en busca de riqueza, parte en descubrimiento de nuevas tierras, topando con una asombrosa civilización de costumbres tan extrañas como incomprensibles. Pero esto tiene su lógica, a Butler le importaba muy poco que los hábitos sociales de los erewhonianos fueran sensatos, su intención era transponerlos para denunciar su propia sociedad. EREWHON se publicó en 1872 dentro de la corriente (también seguida por Carlyle o Matthew Arnold, entre otros) que advertía sobre la gran mentira que era la sociedad inglesa de la época; industrialmente muy desarrollada, prácticamente a la cabeza del mundo, pero estancada intelectualmente y en la que la educación se basaba fundamentalmente en reprimir la originalidad. Incluso las ideas renovadoras, como el darwinismo, pese a su concepción revolucionaria, corrían el peligro de verse convertidas en artículos de fe, debido a la pereza intelectual de la época. EREWHON es pues una visión crítica de este estado de cosas, en el que la hipocresía y el convencionalismo han congelado prácticamente la evolución social e intelectual, y para ello Butler se vale del artificio de dar la vuelta a la situación, creando una sociedad en la que pone en el lugar del estado intelectual el estado físico y viceversa, de este modo, los habitantes de Erewhon (anagrama en ingles de nowhere = ninguna parte) no dudan en exponer públicamente sus bajezas y vicios morales, que son convenientemente tratados por especialistas en la materia, mientras que ocultan a toda costa cualquier problema de salud por nimio que éste sea. La interpretación inmediata es que Butler, asimilando moralidad con salud, pretendía manifestarse contra la moralina puritana que le había tocado vivir y que condenaba al individuo al silencio y al aislamiento. La proscripción de las máquinas en Erewhon, anecdótica pese al título de este volumen, también parece ser un arma arrojadiza en contra del incipiente maquinismo que todo lo inundaba y que debía ser, incluso para el lúcido Butler, una amenaza para un cierto orden natural y, como hoy día parece demostrarse, probablemente más tranquilo y relajado. La ironía con la que parece que se concibió la obra se ha perdido con el paso del tiempo, sólo en los pasajes finales, en los que propone realizar periódicas expediciones a Erewhon con la intención de reclutar esclavos, retoma el tono que imprimió Swift a UNA MODESTA PROPOSICIÓN, pero por lo demás, hoy día esta novela no deja de ser una curiosidad casi arqueológica. Related books
Common terms and phrasesalready animals Arowhena balloon beauty became become began believe better body Butler CHAPTER Chowbok Colleges of Unreason consciousness considered creature death descended dipsomania disease doubt embezzled Erewhon Erewhonians escape existence eyes fact Faido father fear feel felt friends G. B. Shaw give glaciers Habakkuk hand head heard hope human hundred hypothetical idea inasmuch kill kind knew less living looked lost ten tribes machines Mahaina man's matter mechanical moral mountain Musical Banks nature never Nosnibor once opinions parents pass perhaps person present prisoner punished reader reason reproductive system river river-bed rose-seed Salvator Rosa Samuel Butler seemed seen sense sheep side soon sort statues straightener sure swag T. H. Huxley things thought tion told unborn vapour-engine vegetable watch whole wool-shed Ydgrun young Yram Zulora References from web pagesErewhon - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Erewhon by Samuel Butler - Project Gutenberg Samuel Butler’s Erewhon Samuel Butler : Erewhon Erewhon or Erewhemos? §9. "Erewhon". XIV. George Meredith, Samuel Butler, George Gissing ... Butler, Samuel : Erewhon Bibliomania: Free Online Literature and Study Guides Erewhon SAMUEL BUTLER'S "EREWHON" BOOKS; Reprints of Two Satirical Works ... References to this bookFrom other books
From Google ScholarCare-eliciting Behavior In Man.SCOTT HENDERSON - 1974 - The Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease Bateson and Chromosomes: Conservative Thought in ScienceWILLIAM COLEMAN - 1971 - Centaurus Kinesthetic-Visual Matching and the Self-Concept as Explanations ...Robert W Mitchell - 1997 - Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour Beyond the body schema: Visual, prosthetic, and technological ...Nicholas P Holmes, Charles Spence, UK Oxford Popular passagesAnd the Lord said, Behold, there is a place by me, and thou shalt stand upon a rock : and it shall come to pass, while my glory passeth by, that I will put thee in a clift of the rock, and will cover thee with my hand while I pass by: and I will take away mine hand, and thou shalt see my back parts : but my face shall not be seen. Page 267 For now should I have lain still and been quiet: I should have slept; then had I been at rest: With kings and counsellors of the earth, which built desolate places for themselves; Or with princes that had gold, who filled their houses with silver: Or as an hidden untimely birth I had not been; as infants which never saw light. Page 172 LET the day perish wherein I was born, and the night in which it was said, " There is a man child conceived. Page 172 If all machines were to be annihilated at one moment, so that not a knife nor lever nor rag of clothing nor anything whatsoever were left to man but his bare body alone that he was born with, and if all knowledge of mechanical laws were taken from him so that he could make no more machines, and all machine-made food destroyed so that the race of man should be left as it were naked upon a desert island, we should become extinct in six weeks. A few miserable individuals might linger, but even these... Page 207 The root alluded to is not the potato of our own gardens, .but a plant so near akin to it that I have ventured to translate it thus. Apropos of its intelligence, had the writer known Butler he would probably have said — "He knows what's what, and that's as high, As metaphysic wit can fly. Page 200 ... it is by chance that man is drawn through life with his face to the past instead of to the future. For the future is there as much as the past, only that we may not see it. Is it not in the loins of the past... Page 168 But the servant glides by imperceptible approaches into the master; and we have come to such a pass that, even now, man must suffer terribly on ceasing to benefit the machines. Page 206 ... possessing little consciousness now. A mollusc has not much consciousness. Reflect upon the extraordinary advance which machines have made during the last few hundred years, and note how slowly the animal and vegetable kingdoms are advancing. Page 199 ... witness to the life of bygone ages. I felt how short a space of human life was the period of our own existence. I was more impressed with my own littleness, and much more inclinable to believe that the people whose sense of the fitness of things was equal to the upraising of so serene a handiwork, were hardly likely to be wrong in the conclusions they might come to upon any subject. Page 139 ... how it is that anything so remarkable as a state of consciousness comes about as the result of irritating nervous tissue, is just as unaccountable as the appearance of the Djin when Aladdin rubbed his lamp in the story. Page 268 Contents
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