Sir Thomas More Utopia Analysis

Utopia, written by Sir Thomas More (1478-1535) published in 1516, depicts an ideal society where there was no crime or poverty, and everyone was treated equally. It unusually varies between ‘idealisation and irony’ (Boesky 1996: 3), and has been described as the ‘progenitor of a new genre’ and a ‘new articulation of national consciousness’. (Boesky 1996: 3). More, who coined the term ‘utopia’, was the first Tudor writer to use America as a basis for England’s hopes; both countries appeared to share an element of ‘otherworldliness’. (Knapp 1992: 8).

More’s novel was influenced by travelling. He was able to imagine a world that completely contrasted the one that he was living in. This help came from Amerigo Vespucci, whose letters and accounts contained his voyages across the Atlantic Ocean to these only just discovered lands. Within, he spoke of a place which is reminiscent of Utopia with the appearance of equality, an economy that was right and fair, with no conflicts within the government or dishonesty which was allowed in Europe. Columbus’s voyage to the Caribbean preceded Utopia by just twenty four years, influencing the location in which the work was based: the western hemisphere, where he could possibly have imagined his faultless realm. This is suggested in the text:

‘”You will have a hard time persuading me," said Peter Giles, "that people in that new land are better governed than in the world we know. Our minds are not inferior to theirs, and our governments, I believe, are older. Long experience has helped us develop many conveniences of life, and by good luck we have discovered many other things which human ingenuity could never have hit upon”’. (Greenblatt 2012: 596).

In Book I of Utopia, More spoke of a Western Euro...

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...ting to a high extent the political situation in England at the time. Utopia uses divergence to criticise the dictatorship nature of which England was governed, as well as contradicting England with the oppressed political situation in the book. Repression is present in both books; in England it involved the poor and the weak, and the rich and the powerful; in Utopia, the repression was evident regarding all citizens talking unreservedly about matters concerning the general public. One of More’s objectives in Utopia was to influence the government and statute of England. As well as being shown in the first book very specifically, it is relayed in Erasmus’s well-known letter to Hutten: “He published his Utopia for the purpose of showing, what are the things that occasion mischief in commonwealths; having the English Constitution especially in view.” (More 2012: 140).