AESTETIC UTOPIA OF WILLIAM MORIS

Text topic: Forty Years of Kultura Journal

Text author: Бранимир Стојковић

The aim of this paper is to show the cultural and intellectual relevance of thought of William Morris at the beginning of the third millennium. It is primarily exposed in his novel “News from Nowhere”, which is a utopian vision of a society whose main feature is concomitant aestheticism and simplification of life in an age that could be called post-post-industrial. The first part of the paper analyses elements of the intellectual biography of William Morris and points to a fundamental diversity of understanding of and reception of his work over the past hundred and fifty years. The paper then analyzes the main features of his utopian imagination and exposes arguments that speak in favor of their permanent relevance. The final part of the paper confirms the claim that William Morris was primarily a morrist - a term which denotes its original synthesis of romanticism, Marxism and utopianism.