SOURCE: “Howells and the Practicable Utopia: The Allegorical Structure of the Altrurian Romances,” in The Journal of Narrative Technique, Vol. 13, No. 2, Spring, 1983, pp. 118-30.

In the following essay, Uba explores the allegorical nature of William Dean Howells's utopian romances, A Traveller from Altruria and Through the Eye of the Needle.

The utopian novels A Traveller From Altruria (1894) and Through the Eye of the Needle (1907) hold an anomalous position in the literary canon of William Dean Howells. Not only do they mark a shift away from his characteristic brand of realism but both individually and collectively they pose a problem of formal classification. In accordance with critical tradition, they are commonly referred to as “novels” or “romances,” yet the first term seems to refer in most instances to the generic definition of the novel as a long, fictional prose narrative (and thereby distinguished from poetry, the drama, and the...