Thomas More's Utopia: The Birth of Literary Genre

In fact, this chapter is divided into two sections; a first one dealing with More’s Utopia, it aims at introducing More’s narrative as the founding text of the utopian discourse as it is known today. It has also as a purpose the attempt to define the pillars of the perfectibility of the Utopian sociopolitical and cultural systems. The second section however, deals with Swift’s Gulliver in relation to More’s Utopia. In this section the two texts are compared and contrasted from an intertextual lens verifying by that the hypothesis that there is a genetic link between Utopia and Gulliver, and that the later text reshaped the utopian mode of writing to create a utopian sub-genre which is dystopia enriching by that the utopian discourse.

This section is devoted to Thomas More’s Utopia and its detailed description of the land of Utopia’s laws, customs, politics, economics, social organization and all its other aspects that build the utopian discourse in Utopia. Exploring Utopia is necessary because it plays the role of the pretext in the intertextual reading of the utopian discourse in English travel literature. In other terms, the utopian material More’s text offers is the quintessence of the theoretical tool in this research, and this is the reason why I will try to keep a neutral attitude in my description of More’s Utopia since the end of my study is not to discuss Utopia itself, it is rather to examine how its utopian discourse has been reformulated and rewritten in other utopian travel texts. Therefore, below will be a plain description of the dynamics in Utopia that allowed it to be considered as the guiding book of how utopias should be like.

Born in 1478, Thomas More lived the spirit of the Renaissance and its Humanist strong faith in the possibility of man transcending his limits. It was a time when Columbus with his discovery of the New World opened both imaginary and real horizons, dreams of exploring new lands hunted spirits of explorers and writers. It was also a period of drastic changes all over Europe, the Roman Catholic Church began to lose its power with Martin Luther’s Protestant Reformation and followed by Henry VIII founding of the Anglican Church during the English Reformation. Moreover, due to rapid expansion, empires started to extend, framing an age of constant wars. Because of such political turmoil, the period was characterized by questioning existing political and social convictions and philosophies, and more importantly, the feeling of instability motivated the tendency of proposing and experimenting new political and social organizations as it is clearly reflected in More’s Utopia.

Thomas More became familiar with politics at an early age, at the age of twelve he was a page for John Morton, Lord Chancellor of England. After his law studies at Oxford, he became particularly interested in reading in Latin and Greek since works of religious, scientific, philosophical, or cultural significance were published in Latin. His career as a politician really ascended flourished when he was given the position of MP of London in 1515. He had the opportunity to take part in politic negotiations with the Netherlands. That episode in his life allowed him to travel over Europe for a long period of time and critics think that Utopia was inspired by this trip.

More’s position in the House of Commons, led him to contribute in important controversial decisions which caused later this execution. In Responsio and Lutherum he defended the church and attacked Luther’s ideologies. He resisted the Protestant Reformation in general, persecuting Protestants. More was appreciated for his loyalty to King Henry VIII and was rewarded by granting him the position of Lord Chancellor of England in 1529, yet there were many rumors that he violently treated Protestant prisoners. When Henry VIII declared decided to be at the head of the New Anglican church, more resigned from the position in 1531. The relationship between King Henry VIII and More worsened when this later did not support Henry VIII’s marriage to Anne Boleyn. More publically executed in 1531.

More was had an influential role in the sociopolitical and religious scene of England under the reign of Henry VIII, this must have certainly inspired the ideas he presented in his Utopia. However, as we will see below his attempt to create a perfect society that eliminated class consciousness and encouraged communal living came into opposition with his devotion to King Henry VIII’s reign. Examining this paradox is not really the subject matter of this research, because it is the text contribution in creating the utopian genre of writing that is pertinent and not its contextual implications that really motivates this study. Nonetheless, it is worth mentioning that beyond the political positions he occupied, More was a philosopher and there is a strong probability that Utopia reflects his personal indirect oppositions to the political policies of his time. The debate on whether Utopia is a satire, a political critique, or a description of real social expectations is still open and attracts many utopist critics and as mentioned before maybe no text transcended its literary boundaries to exist in many other non-literary disciplines as Utopia. This multidisciplinary aspect of Utopia has often overshadowed its literary contribution and returning to the very first nature of this travel fiction will allow us to appreciate its literacy.

Before dealing with the social, political cultural and religious aspects of More’s imagined ideal world, it is important to remark that Thomas More’s Utopia can be read as an interesting instance of literary rhetorical devices mainly the Socratic irony of the Greek author Lucian who, as it appears in the beginning of Utopia, was translated by More and Erasmus into Latin. For Stephen W. Smith in his Literary Designs: Thomas More’s Utopia as Literature points that the Lucianian irony has its place in More’s Utopia because it has the “power to prick and challenge the idle reader … and to draw the murmuring soul into dialectical inquiry, an act requiring the reader’s active participation—and vulnerability—as he carefully weighs and sifts opposing view in the arduous pursuit of truth.” (2006:39). More employs this method in his narrative, and Raphael comments ironically on utopian policies that underline the text’s satirical nature. Accordingly, the work is read as an exposition of England’s unfair laws and contradictory beliefs. As Smith also notes, neglecting to notice such irony can lead to “misinterpretation and error … of what we read and accidently increase our ignorance, rather than moving us toward truth.” (2006: 40). By using irony in Utopia, More masks the ‘truth’ under a layer of satire. Thus, we can say that satire is the second nature of Utopia, and as we will examine in the selected utopian texts for this study, they are all directly or indirectly built on the literary device of satire. In other terms, Utopia which shows itself as a very interesting instance of intertextual borrowing from the tradition of satire made of this literary device an essential aspect of travel utopian writing. In fact, we can only be mistaken at considering Utopia as a mere alternative perfect society; it is a curious book rich in ironical insinuations, and much less straightforward than one might think.

Thomas More’s Utopia is divided into two books, written separately but published together in 1516. The first book paves the way for the trip to Utopia which develops in the second book. In the first book the narrator, Thomas More meets his friend Peter Giles in Bruges. Giles introduces More to Raphael Hythloday, a very important character since it is from his tongue that we know about Utopia. He is an explorer who travelled all over the world. More, Giles, and Hythloday go to More’s house, and Hythloday starts describing his travels. The information that Raphael is a traveler puts us in the atmosphere of a travel narrative right from the beginning, he is described as “a stranger, who seemed past the flower of his age; his face was tanned, he had a long beard, and his cloak was hanging carelessly about him, so that, by his looks and habit, I concluded he was a seaman.”