Utopia
"Utopia" is a term that English statesman and author Thomas More coined in the early sixteenth century in his novel of the same name. It is derived from two Greek words:Eutopia (m...
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Utopia
UTOPIA. The term utopia (from the Greek ou-topos, "no place," or eutopos, "good place," and evidently coined as a pun by Thomas More for the title of his book publis...
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Utopianism
Overview
History
Theory in Depth
Theory in Action
Analysis and Critical Response
Topics for Further Study
Bibliography
See Also
Overview
From the writings of ancient Greece to the mos...
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Utopian Analysis and Design
NOTE: Although the following article has not been revised for this edition of the Encyclopedia, the substantive coverage is currently appropriate. The editors have provided...
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Utopias and Utopianism
The word utopia was invented by Thomas More, who published his famous Utopia (in Latin) in 1516. More coupled the Greek words ou (no, or not) and topos (place) to invent a name ...
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Utopia and Utopian Ideals
Introduction
The idea of a perfect world can be uniquely individual. For some, it would be a society without war or violence. For others, it would be a world based on equalit...
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INTRODUCTION
Sir Thomas More, son of Sir John More, a justice of
the King’s Bench, was born in 1478, in Milk
Street, in the city of London. After his earlier
education at St. Anthony&rsqu...
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The life of the English humanist and statesman Sir Thomas More (1478-1535) exemplifies the political and spiritual upheaval of the Reformation. The author of "Utopia," he was beheaded for opposing the...
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Sir Thomas More is--in the phrase associated with him since the early sixteenth century--a man for all seasons. World renowned as the author of Utopia (1516), he wrote humanist, polemical, and spiritu...
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Sir Thomas More's place in the history of rhetoric and logic is secure for two reasons. First, he enacted the "new learning" of the studia humanitatis, translating and transforming ancient literature ...
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In the excerpt below, Kinney argues the importance of rhetoric to educated Englishmen in the sixteenth century and examines its application in Thomas More's Utopia and George Gascoigne's...
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In the following essay, Zavala argues that Thomas More's Utopia served as an early model for the relatively humanistic treatment of Indians in Mexico in the sixteenth century by the Spanish jur...
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In the following excerpt from his critical study, The Oxford Reformers, Seebohm places Utopia in its political and historical context, contrasting what he believes to be More's ideal commonweal...
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In the following excerpt, Logan describes Utopia as a "best commonwealth exercise" in the classical tradition, pointing to the echoes of Plato and Aristotle in the work.
To examine the t...
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In the essay that follows, Astell focuses on the letters, or parerga, that introduce More's text, using them to study how the fiction constructs its audience and, specifically, how the dialogue...
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In the following essay, Kaufman takes issue with the traditional reading of Utopia as a direct embodiment of humanist ideals, calling it instead "a gentle ecclesial remonstrance " to the...
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In the essay below, Skinner examines the values and conventions that characterized Renaissance discussions of political theory in order to determine the Utopia's place in that discussion and to...
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In the following essay, Romm examines the significance of naming in the Utopia, arguing that More used irony and ambiguity in an effort to demonstrate the unreliability of language.
Like his fellow hu...
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Freeman interprets the Utopia as an autobiographical text in the essay that follows, finding in it an expression of More's "desire to strike a proper balance between what is private and ...
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The three main characters talking in the garden.
of Sir Thomas More, Lord Chancellor of England and Martyr Under Henry VIII, Burns & Oates, Ltd., 1891, pp. 253-72.
[In the following essa...
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Kautsky, as the following chapter from his book demonstrates, is known among More scholars for presenting the first significant argument that More's Utopia described and advocated a socialist s...
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In the following chapters from his critical study Introduction to Utopia, Donner addresses the debate concerning More's portrayal of communism; he concludes that the Utopia indirectly rejects c...
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In the following essay, Bevington suggests that the dialogue form of the Utopia provides a clue to the author's opinions: More identified with neither Hythloday nor the character named More, bu...
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Hexter's essay, "Utopia and Its Historical Milieu" has been recognized since its publication as a groundbreaking contribution to More scholarship. The excerpt that follows present...
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In the following essay, Khanna contends that More recommends open-mindedness in his text, exemplifying it both in the Utopians and in the dialogue between the characters of Hythloday, More, and Peter ...
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In the following essay, Morgan examines More's treatment of the theme of "the natural" versus "the artificial" in Utopia, emphasizing his concern with "the di...
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In the essay that follows, Rebhorn investigates the parallels between More's Utopia and Renaissance humanist ideals, exploring how the Utopia draws upon and extends humanist agricultural metaph...
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In the following excerpt from her critical study of Utopian literature, Berneri argues that "though the Utopias of Thomas More, Campanella and Andreae embody to a great extent the spirit of the...
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In the following essay, the critics discuss the revival of utopianism during the Renaissance, focusing on themes of communism, religion, and natural science in Utopian thought.
With the rise of humani...
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In the following excerpt from their introduction to Utopian Thought in the Western World, the critics discuss several aspects of Utopian literature, including: Utopian literary forms, critical approac...
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In the following essay, Mumford discusses the origins of the concept of Utopia in ancient Greece, focusing on Plato's conception of the ideal city in the Republic.
Before the great empires of R...
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In the following excerpt from an essay first published in the Spring, 1965 issue of Daedalus, Frye discusses common characteristics of utopian literature, emphasizing the importance of ritual, the Chr...
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In the following essay, Elliott presents argues that "utopia is the secularization of the myth of the Golden Age, " and that "utopia and satire are ancestrally linked in the celeb...
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In the following excerpt from his survey of Utopian thought, Mumford discusses the place of social myth in utopianism, focusing on the Renaissance ideal of the Country House: "the chief pattern...
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In the following essay, Thomas discusses the Utopian impulse in literature in relation to millenarianism during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.
At the beginning of the seventeenth century the...
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In the following essay, Nydahl surveys the utopian vision expressed in American fictional works of the late eighteenth century.
The earliest utopian visions in and of America were of millennial expect...
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In the following essay, Dentith studies the ways in which nineteenth-century utopian literature employs and transcends the trope of inversion.
In Chapter 17 of Adam Bede, ‘In which the story pa...
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In the following essay, Stoehr examines the impact of Nathaniel Hawthorne's life at the utopian colony, Brook Farm, on his novel The Blithedale Romance, and explores the tension between art and...
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In the following essay, Ferguson critiques Mark Twain's utopian story “The Curious Republic of Gondour.”
“The Curious Republic of Gondour” was published anonymously ...
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In the following essay, Beauchamp evaluates the primitive, escapist utopia of Melville's Typee.
Among the compensatory myths of political theory, before the Idea of Progress pushed all others t...
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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 Travell...
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In the following essay, Jehmlich investigates the problem of labor as it is addressed in Edward Bellamy's Looking Backward, and examines the novel's influence on subsequent utopian treat...
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In the following essay, Jacobs investigates the utopian elements of Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Blithedale Romance.
“Upon my honor, I am not quite sure that I entirely comprehend my own me...
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In the following essay, Khanna discusses Edward Bellamy's early utopian fiction in order to highlight the tension between “theory and praxis” in Looking Backward.
Utopian fiction ...
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In the following essay, Suvin contends that utopian fiction is a subgenre of science fiction, using William Morris's News from Nowhere and Victorian science fiction of the 1880s as evidence to ...
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In the following essay, Kipperman studies the utopian, romantic, and radical view of history offered in Percy Shelley's Hellas.
“We are all Greeks,” said Shelley in his Preface to...
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In the following essay, Pearson observes affinities in modern feminist utopian novels and suggests that such works “seek to transcend the limitations of female experience.”
Feminist utop...
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In the following essay, Albinski surveys the major themes and fictional modes of nineteenth-century British women's utopian fiction.
For the utopian idealist, fiction offers advantages that the...
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In the following essay, Peyser argues that Gilman's utopian novel Herland, rather than being a “playful deconstruction of patriarchal thought,” remains “ground[ed in the do...
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In the following essay, Rosenthal considers Elizabeth Gaskell's Cranford as a feminist utopia.
In her landmark essay, “Feminist Criticism in the Wilderness,” Elaine Showalter expl...
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In the following essay, Gough analyzes the utopian vision and technique of Gilman's novel Moving the Mountain, and contrasts this work with her later Herland.
Many recent theorists of utopian t...
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In the following essay, Nydahl surveys the utopian vision expressed in American fictional works of the late eighteenth century.
The earliest utopian visions in and of America were of millennial expect...
Read more
In the following essay, Pearson observes affinities in modern feminist utopian novels and suggests that such works “seek to transcend the limitations of female experience.”
Feminist utop...
Read more
In the following essay, Albinski surveys the major themes and fictional modes of nineteenth-century British women's utopian fiction.
For the utopian idealist, fiction offers advantages that the...
Read more
In the following essay, Dentith studies the ways in which nineteenth-century utopian literature employs and transcends the trope of inversion.
In Chapter 17 of Adam Bede, ‘In which the story pa...
Read more
Niccolo Machiavelli and Sir Thomas More wrote two different books concerning their idea of a perfect government. A state under the Machiavellian rule and a state organized like "Utopia" diffe...
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The Quest for Perfection Never Ceases
A utopia is "an ideally perfect place, especially in its social, political, and moral aspects", as stated by Dictionary.com. This is true for all utopias, yet al...
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What is it about Thomas More's Utopia that makes it as accessible and relevant to a 21st century westernized Catholic teenage boy as it did to an 18th century middle aged Jewish women? Utopia, a text ...
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Philosophers in all ages have asked this question. Theories were born, debates stretch through the centuries. The argument still goes on and it is very unlikely that the question will ever be solved. ...
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The main concern of writers of anti-utopia narratives is the negative side of a utopian world. However, other particular concerns towards this topic may vary due to their era in which they writ...
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Growing up for Helen Keller was rather difficult due to her disability. She stayed strong and focused. Through experiences in her life, she knows that, "Although the world is very full of suffering,...
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The ideal Utopian society worked extremely well in Utopia, however, it would not work in America because of the population's mindset. In Utopia, the people were humble and accepted the rule of author...
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Sir Thomas More in 1516 first conceived utopia while he served as an ambassador For England on a party expedition to Flanders. In England his vocation was law and he held the position of Under-Sheriff...
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The Utopia that More creates in his famous satire is his mirror, as well as the mirror of his society. More puts forward many notions in Utopia, such as the Utopians belief in religious tolerance, the...
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Thomas More's Utopia is in many ways a very hopeful book; it implies that humans can be good if put in the right environment. Many people would argue that this could never happen; that the inequaliti...
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Sir Thomas More survives in many different sources including his own book, Utopia, Robert Bolt's play, A Man for all Seasons, and in the encyclopedias; each depicting a different perspective of More....
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The history of mankind is punctuated with epochs of change and awakening. One such period is the European Industrial Revolution of the 18th and 19th centuries. It was during this era that industrial...
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In order to create a utopian text, a person must adhere to the specific conventions designed specifically for this genre. There is a very fine line between utopia and anti-utopian text within the genr...
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The ideas of a perfect society in which all humans are blissfully happy, equal, prosperous and living simply and peacefully has always appealed to humans across many cultures in different historic per...
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Each person has their own personal view of utopia. Utopia is heaven on earth. It is the imagery in which people conjure up to counteract with the depressive or unhappiness in their lives. If lif...
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In Thomas Moore's "Utopia", he discusses how society treats the lower class. The upper/middle classes leave these less fortunate people little money, food, or shelter, and expect them to lead happy, c...
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Throughout Thomas More's Utopia, he is able to successfully able to criticize many of the political, social, and economic ways of the time. His critique of feudalism and capitalism would eventually ...
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Utopia Book Notes is a free study guide on Utopia by Thomas More. Browse the summary below:
Author Biography / Context of the Work
One-Page Plot Summary
Character Descriptio...
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Utopia
Utopia
Utopianism
Utopian Analysis and Design
Utopias and Utopianism
Utopia and Utopian Ideals
Utopia
Thomas More, Sir
Sir Thomas More
Utopia