SOURCE: "The Dialogue in Utopia: Two Sides of the Question," in Studies in Philology, Vol. 58, No. 1, January, 1961 pp. 496-509.

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, but used the discussion to present "a dialogue of the mind with itself. "

Students of Utopia are divided in their interpretation of Thomas More's political and economic opinions. Is More himself for oragainst common ownership of property? Writers on the question have tended to fall into two clearly defined camps, according to mankind's innate tendency to be born into this world as "either a little Liberal, Or else a little Conservative," and the polemical conflict between the factions has assumed in the context of our uneasy modern world the proportions of ideological warfare. The revered name of Thomas More...