Utopia
- Language:
- English
- Translation:
- Ralph Robynson
- Status:
- Complete work
- Authorship:
- Written by the author
- Condition of the text:
- Clean text
- Extent:
- ~47,600 words · 226 passages
Cite this work
- APAThomas More. (n.d.). Utopia. SigPhi. https://sigphiai.com/en/works/thomas-more/utopia
- MLAThomas More. "Utopia." SigPhi, https://sigphiai.com/en/works/thomas-more/utopia.
- ChicagoThomas More. Utopia. SigPhi. https://sigphiai.com/en/works/thomas-more/utopia.
What it is about
A traveller's account of an island with no private property, no money and no unemployment, where all work six hours and eat the same — half political dream, half razor-sharp satire of More's England.
Context and history
Published in Latin at Leuven in 1516, the work of a humanist who was at once Erasmus's friend and a statesman in the service of Henry VIII — the same king who would have him beheaded nineteen years later for refusing to recognise him as head of the Church. The name he coined, from the Greek for 'no-place', has named a whole genre. How much More believed it has always been argued: the book proposes the community of goods and eyes it with irony at once, and that ambiguity is part of what keeps it alive.
Editorial context, not a citable source: unlike the passages of the work itself, these statements cannot be checked against the corpus.
DISCOURSES OF RAPHAEL HYTHLODAY, OF THE BEST STATE OF A COMMONWEALTH OF THEIR TOWNS, PARTICULARLY OF AMAUROT OF THEIR MAGISTRATES OF THEIR TRADES, AND MANNER OF LIFE OF THEIR TRAFFIC OF THE TRAVELLING OF THE UTOPIANS OF THEIR SLAVES, AND OF THEIR MARRIAGES OF THEIR MILITARY DISCIPLINE OF THE RELIGIONS OF THE UTOPIANS UTOPIA INTRODUCTION UTOPIA 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’s School, in Threadneedle Street, he was placed, as a boy, in the household of Cardinal John Morton, Archbishop of Canterbury and Lord Chancellor. It was not unusual for persons of wealth or influence and sons of good families to be so established together in a relation of patron and client. The youth wore his patron’s livery, and added to his state. The patron used, afterwards, his wealth or influence in helping his young client forward in the world. Cardinal Morton had been in earlier days that Bishop of Ely whom Richard III. sent to the Tower; was busy afterwards in hostility to Richard; and was a chief adviser of Henry VII., who in 1486 made him Archbishop of Canterbury, and nine months afterwards Lord Chancellor. Cardinal Morton—of talk at whose table there are recollections in “Utopia”—delighted in the quick wit of young Thomas More. He once said, “Whoever shall live to try it, shall see this child here waiting at table prove a notable and rare man.”← Back to Thomas More