Utopia
Tags
Summary
Editor's review
Who it's for
A good fit for
- University students and teachers studying political philosophy and the history of social thought
- General readers interested in ideal societies and the issue of public ownership
- Learners studying Renaissance humanism and satirical literature
- Writers and critics who wish to understand the origins of the concept of "utopia"
Not a good fit for
- Readers of pure literature who expect a complete novelistic plot and the fates of characters
- Readers unwilling to analyze dialogue form and irony and who want only conclusions
- Beginners lacking sufficient ability in German or Latin translations and without a parallel-text edition
Reading tips
- First read the introduction and the note on the edition to confirm the language, translator, and base text of the copy in hand.
- Read through the first time to grasp the overall framework of Hythloday's narrative, then read again to discern the ironic tone.
- Read alongside materials on More's life and sixteenth-century English society to understand its real-world references.
- After reading, compare later utopian and dystopian works to trace how the concept evolved.
About the publisher
Project Gutenberg is a digital publishing project focused on public-domain ebooks. Its publishing direction centers on classic literary works whose copyright has expired, covering genres such as poetry, drama, fiction, and epic. Representative books include Lyrical Ballads by Wordsworth and Coleridge, Proust's Du côté de chez Swann, Shakespeare's Macbeth and The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, Homer's The Iliad, Dante's La Divina Comèdia: Purgatòri, Cervantes's The History of Don Quixote, Volume 2, and Grahame's The Wind in the Willows. Its author resources consist mainly of classic Western writers such as Wordsworth, Proust, Shakespeare, Homer, Dante, Cervantes, Grahame, and Tolstoy. Its publishing feature is the provision of freely accessible ebooks in EPUB and Kindle formats; it is not a traditional publisher, and publicly available information is limited.
Contents
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FAQ
Is this book a novel or a work of political theory?
What language is this edition in?
Are the utopian institutions in the book More's own views?
Comments
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About the author
Thomas More (1478–1535) was an English humanist of the Renaissance, as well as a lawyer, statesman, and writer, who served as Lord Chancellor under Henry VIII. In 1516 he published Utopia in Latin, depicting through a fictional island an ideal society with common ownership of property; the work founded the traditions of utopian socialism and utopian literature and remains his best-known representative work. Another major work, A Dialogue of Comfort Against Tribulation, explores faith and spiritual consolation in adversity through dialogue. Because he refused to acknowledge the king as supreme head of the Church, More was executed at the Tower of London in 1535 and was canonized by the Catholic Church in 1935. His writings combine humanist reflection with literary imagination and have had a lasting influence on later political thought.
