'Prior to its discovery, Australia was a favourite setting for imaginary ideal societies in classical French utopian literature. Despite historical experience and empirical evidence, the utopian paradigm has persisted in French writings on Australia throughout the period of colonisation and settlement and remains relevant in contemporary representations of this cross-cultural corpus. This study seeks to demonstrate the ongoing importance of the utopian paradigm in contemporary French writings on Australia through criteriological and intertextual analyses. A comparison of current representations of utopia with those apparent in previous descriptions of the antipodes reveals some unexpected avatars of the utopian paradigm in French writings on Australia.'
Source: Abstract.
