Final paper help?

[Treebeard's apprentice]

I am writing a paper for an Honors class and the subject is utopian writings. For the final project, I want to compare a work that I read previously to something we've read in class (Plato's Republic, More's Utopia, Christine de Pizan's Book of the City of Ladies, etc). I was going to use Orwell's 1984, but it has been done so many times and I want to do some thing different, so I was thinking maybe the Shire or Gondor. Any ideas?

[IronParrot]

I'm not sure how much you can say about the Shire or Gondor, since we don't really have a lot to work with regarding their governance - nor would I call the LOTR-era Gondor anywhere near utopian, considering it has suffered an entire age of decadence.

Choose a work that you can say a lot about regarding its views of governance. It's true that 1984 is perhaps overdone, and I was about to suggest Brave New World, but that's probably just as overdone as well. But that doesn't matter as long as you do it really well and in an original way.

[Elfhelm]

For anti-utopian ideas, I think the Handmaid's Tale by Atwood (?) or The Disposessed by Leguin are both awesome. Have you read either of those?