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Utopia

Utopia

About the Book

In his most famous and controversial book, Utopia, Thomas More imagines a perfect island nation where thousands live in peace and harmony, men and women are both educated, and all property is communal. Through dialogue and correspondence between the protagonist Raphael Hythloday and his friends and contemporaries, More explores the theories behind war, political disagreements, social quarrels, and wealth distribution and imagines the day-to-day lives of those citizens enjoying freedom from fear, oppression, violence, and suffering. Originally written in Latin, this vision of an ideal world is also a scathing satire of Europe in the sixteenth century and has been hugely influential since publication, shaping utopian fiction even today.

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About the Author

Thomas More
Saint Thomas More, 1478–1535, English statesman and author of Utopia, celebrated as a martyr in the Roman Catholic Church. He received a Latin education in the household of Cardinal Morton and at Oxford. Through his contact with the new learning and his friendships with Colet, Lyly, and Erasmus, More became an ardent humanist. As a successful London lawyer, he attracted the attention of Henry VIII, served him on diplomatic missions, entered the king’s service in 1518, and was knighted in 1521. More held important government offices and, despite his disapproval of Henry’s divorce from Katharine of Aragón, he was made lord chancellor at the fall of Wolsey (1529). He resigned in 1532 because of ill health and probably because of increasing disagreement with Henry’s policies. Because of his refusal to subscribe to the Act of Supremacy, which impugned the pope’s authority and made Henry the head of the English Church, he was imprisoned (1534) in the Tower and finally beheaded on a charge of treason.

A man of noble character and deep, resolute religious conviction, More had great personal charm, unfailing good humor, piercing wit, and a fearlessness that enabled him to jest even on the scaffold. His Utopia (published in Latin, 1516; tr. 1551) is a picture of an ideal state founded entirely on reason. Among his other works in Latin and English are a translation of The Life of John Picus, Earl of Mirandula (1510); a History of Richard III, upon which Shakespeare based his play; a number of polemical tracts against the Lutherans (1528–33); devotional works including A Dialogue of Comfort against Tribulation (1534) and a Treatise on the Passion

(1534); poems; meditations; and prayers. More was beatified (1886) by a decree of Pope Leo XIII, canonized (1935) by Pius XI, and proclaimed (2000) the patron saint of politicians by John Paul II.

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About the Author

Paul Turner
Paul Turner was born in 1917, and educated at Winchester and King’s College, Cambridge. He served in the RNVR (air branch) during the war, and then taught English literature at London, Cambridge, and Ankara universities, before joining the Oxford English Faculty in 1964. He is now an Emeritus Fellow of Linacre College, Oxford. He has published a volume on the Victorians in the Oxford History of English Literature, and his translations from Greek, Latin, and German include Longus’s Daphnis and Chloe, Lucian’s Satirical Sketches, and Ovid’s Art of Love. His critical biography of Thomas Hardy came out in 1998, and his edition of Robert Browning’s Aristophanes’ Apology in 2001. In 2002 he was made an MBE. More by Paul Turner
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About the Author

Paul Turner
Paul Turner was born in 1917, and educated at Winchester and King’s College, Cambridge. He served in the RNVR (air branch) during the war, and then taught English literature at London, Cambridge, and Ankara universities, before joining the Oxford English Faculty in 1964. He is now an Emeritus Fellow of Linacre College, Oxford. He has published a volume on the Victorians in the Oxford History of English Literature, and his translations from Greek, Latin, and German include Longus’s Daphnis and Chloe, Lucian’s Satirical Sketches, and Ovid’s Art of Love. His critical biography of Thomas Hardy came out in 1998, and his edition of Robert Browning’s Aristophanes’ Apology in 2001. In 2002 he was made an MBE. More by Paul Turner
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About the Author

Paul Turner
Paul Turner was born in 1917, and educated at Winchester and King’s College, Cambridge. He served in the RNVR (air branch) during the war, and then taught English literature at London, Cambridge, and Ankara universities, before joining the Oxford English Faculty in 1964. He is now an Emeritus Fellow of Linacre College, Oxford. He has published a volume on the Victorians in the Oxford History of English Literature, and his translations from Greek, Latin, and German include Longus’s Daphnis and Chloe, Lucian’s Satirical Sketches, and Ovid’s Art of Love. His critical biography of Thomas Hardy came out in 1998, and his edition of Robert Browning’s Aristophanes’ Apology in 2001. In 2002 he was made an MBE. More by Paul Turner
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