Paniotova, T. (2025) Fantastic Spaces of Utopia – МЕЖДУНАРОДНЫЙ ЖУРНАЛ ИССЛЕДОВАНИЙ КУЛЬТУРЫ

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Taisiya S. PANIOTOVA
Southern Federal University
105/42 Bolshaya Sadovaya Str., Rostov-on-Don, 344006, Russian Federation
Institute of Philosophy and Social and Political Studies, Professor
Doctor of Sciences in Philosophy
e-mail: tspaniotova@sfedu.ru
ORCID: 0000-0003-2529-9216

Paniotova, T. (2025) Fantastic Spaces of Utopia

Abstract: This article is devoted to the construction of fantastic spaces as an integral part of utopian creativity. In myths, legends, and folktales, fantastic worlds were situated in various ideal loci. At the dawn of the modern age, such a place – at once nonexistent (u-topos) and blissful (eu-topos) – became known as utopia. With the geographic discoveries and the revival of urban life in Europe, physical space was transformed into an object of geographical description (islands, continents) and detailed geometrical planning (ideal city projects). In classical utopias (T. More, T. Campanella), the reception of new ideological attitudes manifested in the form of geographical isolationism and urbanism. The island (isla) ensured the inaccessibility and preservation of the ideal social order; the city represented harmony between aesthetic form and political structure. The author argues that the discovery of new worlds stimulated a transformation in the ways fantastic spaces were constructed. Drawing on the texts of T. More, T. Campanella, and the activities of their followers in the New World, the article reveals new cognitive strategies of spatial imagination–specifically, the incorporation of factual elements alongside fictional ones; the reinterpretation of classical heritage in the context of geographical and scientific discoveries; and more. As a result, fantastic space is conceived as an interweaving of the credible and the incredible, the known and the unknown, the discovered and the yet-to-be discovered, belonging simultaneously to the present and to the future. Emerging under the influence of geographical discoveries and later transplanted to the American continent, Renaissance utopia engaged in the appropriation and harmonization of the real physical space of the Americas.

Key words: utopia, fantastic space, island, city, More, Campanella, Vasco de Quiroga.

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For Citation:

Paniotova, T. (2025) Fantastic Spaces of Utopia. International Journal of Cultural Research, 4 (61). 6–19. DOI: 10.52173/2079-1100_2025_4_6

DOI: 10.52173/2079-1100_2025_4_6