Utopia
- Language:
- English
- Translation:
- Ralph Robynson
- Status:
- Complete work
- Authorship:
- Written by the author
- Condition of the text:
- No scanning noise detected (automatic measure over the whole text, not checked by hand)
- Extent:
- ~47,600 words · 226 passages
Cite this work
- APAThomas More. (n.d.). Utopia (Ralph Robynson, Trans.). Digital reproduction: SigPhi. https://sigphiai.com/en/works/thomas-more/utopia
- MLAThomas More. Utopia. Translated by Ralph Robynson. Digital reproduction, SigPhi, https://sigphiai.com/en/works/thomas-more/utopia.
- ChicagoThomas More. Utopia. Translated by Ralph Robynson. Digital reproduction, SigPhi. https://sigphiai.com/en/works/thomas-more/utopia.
Reference to the edition that SigPhi reproduces: SigPhi is its digital reproduction, not its publisher. The edition's year is not in the metadata (hence "n.d."), and the translator appears only when recorded.
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.
when they went by water, and waggons when they travelled over land: he sent with them a very faithful guide, who was to introduce and recommend them to such other princes as they had a mind to see: and after many days’ journey, they came to towns, and cities, and to commonwealths, that were both happily governed and well peopled. Under the equator, and as far on both sides of it as the sun moves, there lay vast deserts that were parched with the perpetual heat of the sun; the soil was withered, all things looked dismally, and all places were either quite uninhabited, or abounded with wild beasts and serpents, and some few men, that were neither less wild nor less cruel than the beasts themselves. But, as they went farther, a new scene opened, all things grew milder, the air less burning, the soil more verdant, and even the beasts were less wild: and, at last, there were nations, towns, and cities, that had not only mutual commerce among themselves and with their neighbours, but traded, both by sea and land, to very remote countries. There they found the conveniencies of seeing many countries on all hands, for no ship went any voyage into which he and his companions were not very welcome. The first vessels that they saw were flat-bottomed, their sails were made of reeds and wicker, woven close together, only some were of leather; but, afterwards, they found ships made with round keels and canvas sails, and in all respects like our ships, and the seamen understood both astronomy and navigation. He got wonderfully into their favour by showing them the use of the needle, of which till then they were utterly ignorant.…