Seminar 5: 
Thomas More’s Utopia (1516) as the Prototype of a Transnational Literary Genre

Paola Spinozzi (Università degli Studi di Ferrara)

TOPIC DESCRIPTION
De Optimo Reipublicae / Statu deque / nova insula Utopia libellus vere aureus, / nec minus salutaris quam festivus, / clarissimi disertissimique viri Thomae Mori / inclytae civitatis Londinensis civis / & Vicecomitis was published in Latin by Thomas More in Louvain towards the end of 1516, in Paris in 1517, and in Basel in 1518. The Swiss edition, printed in the shop of Johann Froben, included letters from Erasmus of Rotterdam to Johann Froben, from Guillaume Budé to Thomas Lupet, from Peter Giles to Jeroen van Busleyden and from Thomas More to Peter Giles. The first English translation by Ralph Robinson dates to 1551.

Book I unfolds as a dialogue between the narrator More, his friend Peter Giles, and Raphael Hythloday, a Portuguese sailor who has travelled with Amerigo Vespucci but is also a humanist philosopher who knows Latin and Greek. Book II is a description of the island of Utopia, its history and institutions. A powerful critique of England under Henry VIII is expressed through direct references to contemporary history in the first book and by means of comparison with the ideal commonwealth in the second. Society, politics and culture, including controversial topics such as private property and communism, despotism and autarchy, euthanasia and suicide are addressed from diverse, even contrasting perspectives.

READING LIST
Primary Texts

Thomas More, Utopia, Latin Text and English Translation, eds George M. Logan, Robert M. Adams and Clarence H. Miller (Cambridge - New York: Cambridge University Press, 1995).

Thomas More, Utopia, Introduction and Translation by Clarence H. Miller (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001).

Thomas More, Utopia, A Revised Translation, Backgrounds, Criticism, ed. by George M. Logan (New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 2011).

Critical Texts

Miguel Abensour, L’Utopie de Thomas More à Walter Benjamin (Paris: Sens & Tonka, 2000).

Robert C. Elliot, The Shape of Utopia: Studies in a Literary Genre (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1970).

Vita Fortunati, Raymond Trousson, Paola Spinozzi, eds, Histoire transnationale de l’utopie littéraire et de l’utopisme (Paris: Champion, 2008).

Stephen Greenblatt, Renaissance Self-Fashioning: From More to Shakespeare (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1980).

J. H. Hexter, “Part I. The Composition of Utopia”, The Complete Works of St. Thomas More, 21 vols, eds Edward Surtz, S. J. and J. H. Hexter (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1974, I ed. 1965), IV, pp. XV-XXIII.

J. H. Hexter, More’s Utopia. The Biography of an Idea (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1952).

Karl Kautsky, Thomas More and His Utopia, translated by H. J. Stenning (London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1979).

Paul Oskar Kristeller, “Thomas More as a Renaissance Humanist”, Moreana, 65-66 (1980), pp. 5-22.

Elizabeth McCutcheon, My Dear Peter: The Ars Poetica and Hermeneutics for More’s Utopia(Angers: Moreana, 1983)

André Prévost, Thomas More et la crise de la pensée européenne (Paris: Mame, 1969).

Thomas I. White, “Pride and the Public Good: Thomas More’s Use of Plato in Utopia”, Journal of the History of Philosophy, 20 (1982): 329-354.

SCHEDULE
Session 1: Classical Origins
The first session will focus on the origins of Utopia. Sources from classical antiquity include Aristophanes’ The Birds and Women in Parliament, Plato’s The Republic and Laws, Lucian’s True History, Horace’s and Juvenal’s satires.

Session 2: Utopia as the Archetype of a Literary Genre
Thomas More’s libellus aureus defines the formal and thematic paradigm of utopia as a literary genre featuring the travel, the traveller, the guide, the dialogue. Polysemy is already evident in the double etymology of the word “Utopia”, from Greek eu (ευ), “good” or ou(ου), “not”, topos(τόπος), “place”, and the suffix-iā(-ία) indicating a toponym. Outopía(Ουτοπία), latinized asŪtopia thus means “no-place-land” and “good-place-land”. The rhetorical complexity of a narrative form incorporating the Platonic dialogue, satire and travel literature, the skilful mixture of fictional and realistic elements, the letters to and from More’s humanist friends enclosed as an introduction to the 1518 edition, also including two woodcuts, the Utopian alphabet, and a six-line stanza by Anemolius, have generated multiple interpretations and qualified Utopia as an open-ended book.

Session 3: Transnational Progenies
Over the centuries utopian and anti-utopian writers have investigated the complexity of an ideal humankind and society thriving on rational perfectibility. In the twentieth and twenty-first century a new concept of “critical utopia” has retained the speculative approach to reality through estrangement stemming from More’s Utopia and expanded on the notion of pluralism and relativism. Looking back towards classical antiquity, rooted in the Renaissance and projected towards future history, oscillating between Englishness and universalism, More has opened up a transnational view of human institutions.

ASSESSMENT

The first seminar grade expresses the activity in the seminar discussion. It can range from 0 to 10, the pass limit is 5. The second seminar grade assesses the quality of paper proposals (300 words minimum), the share of the student in the preparation of the final presentation, its contents and standard. It can range from 0 to 15, the pass limit is 8. The final essay grade is expressed in points from 0 to 30, the pass limit is 15. Deadline for the submission of the essay: 15 July 2013. Length of the essay: 3000-4000 words. The maximum number of points acquired for the 2 seminars and an essay is 80 (25+25+30). For the participation in a workshop 5 points are acquired (10 points for two workshops). For the the submission of an internship application 5 points are acquired and 10 points fort the shortlisting for the internship.