Dystopian Dissertation help please!

[ptdurk]

Right, I've got to hand in my dissertation proposal form Friday and I really need your help.
The books I have been most interested in are dystopian novels, so thought it would make sense to do my dissertation on these books. The course I'm studying is English and American studies so I can only do books by English and American authors. My favorite books are '1984', 'Brave New World', and 'The Handmaids Tale'.
I have spoken to my tutor and she said that I need to narrow down this into a specific theme. The theme I was thinking might work well was looking at control within dystopian societies, and how the issues raised with this correspond to the concerns that existed at the authors time of writing. She suggested the possibility of cloning as a theme but as far as I can see that will not work with the books I want to write about.

Does anyone else have any ideas of themes that would work well with these books? I'll have to look at about 6 novels so any other suggestions would also be appreciated.

Thanks in advance :)
Paul

[Sebas. Melmoth]

control within dystopian societies

Well, off the top: in that vein you might consider H.G. Wells' Time Machine with the overbred Eloi to feed the Morlachs.

There's also a vein of this dystopian futurism in fin-de-siècle French letters: for example Max Nordau's Degeneration, Villiers de l'Isle-Adam's The Future Eve and Axël, Octave Mirbeau's Torture Garden, etc.

You might also incorporate post-Marxist criticism i.e., Adorno (Dialectic of Enlightment), Habermas (Philosophical Discourse of Modernity), Deleuze (A Thousand Plateaus), etc.

[Whifflingpin]

If "control" included "power, its use & misuse" then you could include "Darkness at Noon" by Koestler - (I'm not sure if he counts as "English" within your terms, but he seems to fit into English literature rather than Hungaro-Jewish)

Darkness at Noon is one of the best dystopian novels of C20th, with the additional bonus that it was describing a real dystopia.

[Babak Movahed]

[QUOTE=Sebas. Melmoth;896620]Well, off the top: in that vein you might consider H.G. Wells' Time Machine with the overbred Eloi to feed the Morlachs.

That's a good suggestion, I would also recommend "The Wanting Seed" in regards to the government's power of population control.