English 4371: Cultural Encounters

Householder, fall 2005

9/1/05: Utopia and America’s Impact on the European Imagination

 

 

 

 

  1. Historical backgrounds and contexts.

 

    1. Thomas More

 

                                                              i.      B. 1478, d. 1535 (beheaded) 

 

 

                                                            ii.      Spends time as a young man living as a brother of the Carthusian Order

 

 

                                                          iii.      A politician and diplomat.  Begins writing Utopia while on a mission to discuss the wool trade

 

 

                                                           iv.      1527-1534: Crisis of Succession. 

 

 

Figure 1.  Portrait by Hans Holbein (1527).

 

 

    1. What happened between Columbus’ first voyage in 1492 and the publication of Utopia (in Latin) in 1516?

 

                                                              i.      Amerigo Vespucci, The First Four Voyages.  

 

 

 

                                                            ii.      More European global expansion. 

 

 

 

                                                          iii.      A time of domestic social and political turmoil for England.  

 

 

 

 

    1. What happened between the first publication of Utopia in 1516 and its appearance in English (trans. Ralph Robinson) in 1551? (note: we are using the corrected second edition of 1556)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  1. The relationship between Utopia and “New World” encounter narrative

 

    1. Although More’s geography is sufficiently vague such that we cannot definitively locate the imaginary Utopia in the New World, it’s clear that the idea for the book emerges out of discovery and exploration discourse. 

 

 

 

    1. On the other hand, there are obviously some differences between More’s imagined version of travel narrative and the eyewitness accounts (or purported eyewitness accounts) of Columbus, Vespucci, and others.

 

 

                                                              i.      More’s narrative frame, which both verifies and mediates Hythloday’s tale.

 

 

 

 

                                                            ii.      The difference in ethnographic information.  Compare Vespucci from “The First Voyage.” 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  1. Utopia and “Golden Age” rhetoric

 

2. Woodcut illustration from 1518 edition of Utopia

 

 

 

    1. The Land of Cockaygne

 

 

 

 

    1. The Acadia (Often expressed as an idealization of a past “golden age,” but can also take the form of an idealized future (cf. Ovid’s Metamorphoses and John Smith on New England))

 

 

 

    1. The Perfect Moral Commonwealth

 

 

 

 

    1. Millennial:

 

 

 

 

    1. The Utopia:

 

 

 

 

    1. Compare the Golden Age discourse of Columbus (the Americans’ nakedness, their timidity, their willingness to share gifts, their disinterest in gold) with the highly organized, regulated world of the Utopians. 

 

 

 

 

 

  1. In its attempt to invert English values, Hythloday’s description of Utopia at times borrows from the Golden Age rhetoric of the early explorers, even while it simultaneously presents the Utopians as a more advanced version of England, not a more innocent/pure one. 

 

 

    1. Labor/recreation. 

 

 

 

 

 

    1. Climate. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

    1. Wit/learning. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

    1. Economy/valuation. 

 

 

 

 

 

    1. Conversion fantasy (106-9)

 

 

 

 

 

  1. New world narratives and the novel. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Conclusion:

 

 

 

 

 

 

Next time: Montaigne, “Of Cannibals”; also write 1-2 pp. (double-spaced, typed) response using either Utopia or “Of Cannibals” to assess the proposition that imaginative literature inspired by encounter is more useful for what it tells us about the European “self” than it what it can tell us about the American “Other.”  You can go either way with this; I’m more interested in your ability to work through some of the theoretical questions here than I am in seeing whether you can mount an air-tight argument.  Anchor your assessment in two or three specific textual examples.