Utopia (book)

The title De optimo rei publicae statu deque nova insula Utopia literally translates, "Of a republic's best state and of the new island Utopia".

It is variously rendered as any of the following:

• On the Best State of a Republic and on the New Island of Utopia
• Concerning the Highest State of the Republic and the New Island Utopia
• On the Best State of a Commonwealth and on the New Island of Utopia
• Concerning the Best Condition of the Commonwealth and the New Island of Utopia
• On the Best Kind of a Republic and About the New Island of Utopia
• About the Best State of a Commonwealth and the New Island of Utopia

The original name was even longer: Libellus vere aureus, nec minus salutaris quam festivus, de optimo rei publicae statu deque nova insula Utopia. This translates, "A truly golden little book, no less beneficial than entertaining, of a republic's best state and of the new island Utopia".

"Utopia" is derived from the Greek prefix "ou-" (οὐ), meaning "not", and topos (τόπος), "place", with the suffix -iā (-ία) that is typical of toponyms; hence the name literally means "nowhere", emphasizing its fictionality. In early modern English, Utopia was spelled "Utopie", which is today rendered Utopy in some editions.[3]

In English, Utopia is pronounced exactly as Eutopia (the latter word, in Greek Εὐτοπία [Eutopiā], meaning “good place,” contains the prefix εὐ- [eu-], "good", with which the οὐ of Utopia has come to be confused in the English pronunciation).[4] This is something that More himself addresses in an addendum to his book Wherfore not Utopie, but rather rightely my name is Eutopie, a place of felicitie.[5]

The story is written from the perspective of More himself. This was common at the time, and More uses his own name and background to create the narrator.[8] The book is written in two parts: “Book one: Dialogue of Council,” and “Book two: Discourse on Utopia.”

The first book is told from the perspective of More, the narrator, who is introduced by his friend Peter Giles to a fellow traveller named Raphael Hythloday, whose name translates as “expert of nonsense” in Greek. In an amical dialogue with More and Giles, Hythloday expresses strong criticism of then-modern practices in England and other Catholicism-dominated countries, such as the crime of theft being punishable by death, and the over-willingness of kings to start wars (Getty, 321).

Book two has Hythloday tell his interlocutors about Utopia, where he has lived for five years, with the aim of convincing them about its superior state of affairs. Utopia turns out to be a socialist state. Interpretations about this important part of the book vary. Gilbert notes that while some experts believe that More supports socialism, others believe that he shows how socialism is impractical. The former would argue that More used book two to show how socialism would work in practice. Individual cities are run by privately elected princes and families are made up of ten to sixteen adults living in a single household. It is unknown if More truly believed in socialism, or if he printed Utopia as a way to show that true socialism was impractical (Gilbert). More printed many writings involving socialism, some seemingly in defense of the practices, and others seemingly scathing satires against it. Some scholars believe that More uses this structure to show the perspective of something as an idea against something put into practice. Hythloday describes the city as perfect and ideal. He believes the society thrives and is perfect. As such, he is used to represent the more fanatic socialists and radical reformists of his day. When More arrives he describes the social and cultural norms put into practice, citing a city thriving and idealistic. While some believe this is More's ideal society, some believe the book's title, which translates to “Nowhere” from Greek, is a way to describe that the practices used in Utopia are impractical and could not be used in a modern world successfully (Gilbert). Either way, Utopia has become one of the most talked about works both in defense of socialism and against it.

Utopia has a more playful tone than one might think. While More's world is illustrating whatever point he is trying to get across, he is having fun engaging in creating his own world, as is demonstrated in the way he phrases "Then let me implore you, my dear Raphael,' said I, 'describe that island [Utopia] to us!"(Getty 323). He also says "When Raphael had finished his story, I was left thinking that quite a few of the laws and customs he had described as existing among the Utopians were really absurd." This demonstrates that he realizes his world is bizarre, and wants others to realize how out of place it was in their society. More is quite anxious to create his world, and pieces it together in great detail, taking pleasure in what makes his world different from our own. However, he wants the reader to take his story seriously, which is why he bases it in reality, saying it is a part of the “New World”, this being the parts of America and its surrounding islands discovered by Amerigo Vespucci in 1497.

One of the most troublesome questions about Utopia is Thomas More's reason for writing it.

Most scholars see it as a comment on or criticism of 16th-century Catholicism, for the evils of More's day are laid out in Book I and in many ways apparently solved in Book II.[9] Indeed, Utopia has many of the characteristics of satire, and there are many jokes and satirical asides such as how honest people are in Europe, but these are usually contrasted with the simple, uncomplicated society of the Utopians.

Yet, the puzzle is that some of the practices and institutions of the Utopians, such as the ease of divorce, euthanasia and both married priests and female priests, seem to be polar opposites of More's beliefs and the teachings of the Catholic Church of which he was a devout member.[10] Another often cited apparent contradiction is that of the religious tolerance of Utopia contrasted with his persecution of Protestants as Lord Chancellor. Similarly, the criticism of lawyers comes from a writer who, as Lord Chancellor, was arguably the most influential lawyer in England. It can be answered, however, that as a pagan society Utopians had the best ethics that could be reached through reason alone, or that More changed from his early life to his later when he was Lord Chancellor.[9]

One highly influential interpretation of Utopia is that of intellectual historian Quentin Skinner.[11] He has argued that More was taking part in the Renaissance humanist debate over true nobility, and that he was writing to prove the perfect commonwealth could not occur with private property. Crucially, Skinner sees Raphael Hythlodaeus as embodying the Platonic view that philosophers should not get involved in politics, while the character of More embodies the more pragmatic Ciceronian view. Thus the society Raphael proposes is the ideal More would want. But without communism, which he saw no possibility of occurring, it was wiser to take a more pragmatic view.

Quentin Skinner's interpretation of Utopia is consistent with the speculation that Stephen Greenblatt made in The Swerve: How the World Became Modern. There, Greenblatt argued that More was under the Epicurean influence of Lucretius's On the Nature of Things and the people that live in Utopia were an example of how pleasure has become their guiding principle of life.[12] Although Greenblatt acknowledged that More's insistence on the existence of an afterlife and punishment for people holding contrary views were inconsistent with the essentially materialist view of Epicureanism, Greenblatt contended that it was the minimum conditions for what the pious More would have considered as necessary to live a happy life.[12]

Another complication comes from the Greek meanings of the names of people and places in the work. Apart from Utopia, meaning "Noplace," several other lands are mentioned: Achora meaning "Nolandia", Polyleritae meaning "Muchnonsense", Macarenses meaning "Happiland," and the river Anydrus meaning "Nowater". Raphael's last name, Hythlodaeus means "dispenser of nonsense" surely implying that the whole of the Utopian text is 'nonsense'. Additionally the Latin rendering of More's name, Morus, is similar to the word for a fool in Greek (μωρός). It is unclear whether More is simply being ironic, an in-joke for those who know Greek, seeing as the place he is talking about does not actually exist or whether there is actually a sense of distancing of Hythlodaeus' and the More's ("Morus") views in the text from his own.

The name Raphael, though, may have been chosen by More to remind his readers of the archangel Raphael who is mentioned in the Book of Tobit (3:17; 5:4, 16; 6:11, 14, 16, 18; also in chs. 7, 8, 9, 11, 12). In that book the angel guides Tobias and later cures his father of his blindness. While Hythlodaeus may suggest his words are not to be trusted, Raphael meaning (in Hebrew) "God has healed" suggests that Raphael may be opening the eyes of the reader to what is true. The suggestion that More may have agreed with the views of Raphael is given weight by the way he dressed; with "his cloak... hanging carelessly about him"; a style which Roger Ascham reports that More himself was wont to adopt. Furthermore, more recent criticism has questioned the reliability of both Gile's annotations and the character of "More" in the text itself. Claims that the book only subverts Utopia and Hythlodaeus are possibly oversimplistic.

Utopia was begun while More was an envoy in the Low Country in May 1515. More started by writing the introduction and the description of the society which would become the second half of the work and on his return to England he wrote the "dialogue of counsel", completing the work in 1516. In the same year, it was printed in Leuven under Erasmus's editorship and after revisions by More it was printed in Basel in November 1518. It was not until 1551, sixteen years after More's execution, that it was first published in England as an English translation by Ralph Robinson. Gilbert Burnet's translation of 1684 is probably the most commonly cited version.

The work seems to have been popular, if misunderstood: the introduction of More's Epigrams of 1518 mentions a man who did not regard More as a good writer.

The title of the book has since eclipsed More's original story and the term is now commonly used to describe an idyllic, imaginary society. Although he may not have directly founded the contemporary notion of what has since become known as Utopian and dystopian fiction, More certainly popularised the idea of imagined parallel realities, and some of the early works which owe a debt to Utopia must include The City of the Sun by Tommaso Campanella, Description of the Republic of Christianopolis by Johannes Valentinus Andreae, New Atlantis by Francis Bacon and Candide by Voltaire.

The politics of Utopia have been seen as influential to the ideas of Anabaptism and communism. While utopian socialism was used to describe the first concepts of socialism, later Marxist theorists tended to see the ideas as too simplistic and not grounded on realistic principles. The religious message in the work and its uncertain, possibly satiric, tone has also alienated some theorists from the work.

An applied example of More's Utopia can be seen in Vasco de Quiroga's implemented society in Michoacán, Mexico, which was directly inspired by More's work.

During the opening scene in the film A Man for all Seasons, Utopia is referenced in a conversation. The alleged amorality of England's priests is compared to that of the more highly principled behaviour of the fictional priests in More's Utopia, when a character observes wryly that "every second person born in England is fathered by a priest."

In 1998, the film Ever After: A Cinderella Story made references to the work in multiple scenes.

In 2006, artist Rory Macbeth inscribed all 40,000 words on the side of an old electricity factory in Norwich, England.[13]

In 2019, the video game Final Fantasy XIV made significant reference to the work in its expansion "Shadowbringers".

• More, Thomas (1516/1967), "Utopia", trans. John P. Dolan, in James J. Greene and John P. Dolan, edd., The Essential Thomas More, New York: New American Library.
• Sullivan, E. D. S. (editor) (1983) The Utopian Vision: Seven Essays on the Quincentennial of Sir Thomas More San Diego State University Press, San Diego, California, ISBN 0-916304-51-5

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• The Open Utopia A complete edition (including all of the letters and commendations, as well as the marginal notes, that were included in the first four printings of 1516–18) translated in 2012. Licensed as Creative Commons BY-SA and published in multiple electronic formats (HTML, PDF, TXT, ODF, EPUB, and as a Social Book).
• English translation of Utopia by Gilbert Burnet at Project Gutenberg
• Utopia public domain audiobook at LibriVox
• Thomas More and his Utopia by Karl Kautsky
• Andre Schuchardt: Freiheit und Knechtschaft. Die dystopische Utopia des Thomas Morus. Eine Kritik am besten Staat
•  "Utopia" . The American Cyclopædia. 1879.
• Utopia – Images photocopied the 1518 edition of Utopia, from the collection of the Folger Shakespeare Library
• Utopia 2016, a commemoration of the 500th anniversary of the book centered in London.