This last is a catch-all, too vague to be helpful. They are: the Utopians' manner of waging war their attitude to religion and ‘other Morus gives four reasons for seeing Utopia as absurd. There is much more than what has become a conventional response to utopian fiction So More has anticipated the commonplace reaction to much of the modern utopian tradition which hisīut, if we look more closely at these last two paragraphs, we begin to see that Not silly, Utopia is unrealistic – which is a by no means untypical response to Much of it, he tells us, is absurd and ignobleĪnd, even if there are some desirable features in it, we can have no sensible expectation of their realization. Its pages steps forward and pours cold water on what has been described to us. As we reach the end of Utopia, the ‘Thomas More’ (Morus) depicted in To us: how we should read the description we have just followed and what meaning we should draw from it. How should we react to what we have read? Utopian authors seldom offer guidance on what has just been ‘reported’ Reality we inhabit and ask ourselves to note the apparently unbridgeable gap between the author's fiction and our reality. We turn from an attractive world to the deeply flawed Of an alternative society that we find appealing or deeply satisfying. Perhaps this is especially true of those visions The last section of Utopia written by More and the last that we encounter in readingĪlmost every reader of a work of utopian fiction must finish the book's last sectionĪnd close its pages with the ‘So what?’ question very much in mind. Our reading therefore takes off from what was probably Of this chapter, and which, with its references both to the account of utopia and the dialogue which now precedes it, servesĪs one of those things which reunites the separately written sections. ![]() Finally, he added the bridging section between Book I and Book II, and the conclusion, part of which appears at the head On his return to England, heĬomposed the dialogue on counsel, with its penetrating indictment of contemporary politics, society and international 16relations, which was to become the substance of Book Now comprises most of Book II, in the Netherlands during the late summer and autumn of 1515. Wrote the long and detailed account of the ‘best state of a commonwealth and the new island of utopia’, which More, according to his friend Erasmus, first Was probably written in a different sequence to that in which it was published. Hexter, George Logan notes in his essay earlier in this volume that the text of Utopia įollowing its brilliant reconstruction by J.H. In our own societies I would like rather than expect to see. Meantime, while I can hardly agree with everything he said (though he is a man of unquestionable learningĪnd enormous experience of human affairs), yet I freely confess that in the utopian commonwealth there are many features that ![]() And I still hope such an opportunity will Thinking of these matters more deeply, and for talking them over in more detail. But first I said that we would find some other time for His account of it, I took him by the hand and led him into supper. So with praise for the utopian way of life and Knowing enough unless they found something to criticise in other men's ideas. In these matters, particularly when I recalled what he had said about certain counsellors who were afraid they might not appear But I saw Raphael was tired with talking, and I was not sure he could take contradiction True ornaments and glory of any commonwealth. One thing alone utterly subverts all the nobility, magnificence, splendour and majesty which (in the popular view) are the My chief objection was to the basis of their whole system, that is, their communal living and their moneyless economy. These included their methods of waging war, their religious practices, as well as other of their customs but Story, I was left thinking that quite a few of the laws and customs he had described as existing amongst the Utopians were
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