Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

The reader’s guide tothe Utopia reader

Gregory Claeys and Lyman Tower Sargent (eds.),The Utopia Reader (New York and London: New York University Press, 1999), XIII + 421 pp.

  • Review articles
  • Published:
International Journal of the Classical Tradition Aims and scope Submit manuscript

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

References

  1. A shorter excerpt is included in J. W. Johnson,Utopian Literature: A Selection (New York: Modern Library, 1968). John Carey includes an excerpt inThe Faber Book of Utopias (London: Faber, 1999).

    Google Scholar 

  2. Le mirage Spartiate: Étude sur l’idéalisation de Sparte dans l’antiquité du début de l’école cynique jusqu’à la fin de la cité, Annales de l’Université de Lyon. Troisième série, Lettres, fasc. 13 (Paris: Les Belles lettres 1943).

  3. This telling description of More’s project comes from Erasmus’ letter to Ulrich von Hutten (July 23, 1519), in:Opus epistolarum Des. Erasmi Roterodami, ed. P.S. Allen and H.M. Allen, vol. IV:1519–1521 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1922) 12–23 (Ep. 999). here p. 21, lines 256ff. “Utopiam hoc consilio aedidit, ut indicaret quibus rebus fiat ut minus commode habeant respublicae; sed Britannicam potissimum effinxit, quam habet penitus perspectam cognitamque” (“HisUtopia was published with the aim of showing the causes of the bad condition of states; but was chiefly a portrait of the British state, which he has thoroughly studied and explored”). The English translation comes from Johann Huizinga,Erasmus of Rotterdam, with a selection from the letters of Erasmus, trans. F. Hopman (letters trans. B. Flower) (London: Phaidon, 1952; repr. asErasmus and the Age of Reformation, New York: Harper & Row, 1957) 238.

    Google Scholar 

  4. St. Thomas More: A Preliminary Bibliography of his Works and of Moreana to the Year 1750, with a Bibliography of Utopiana, compiled by J. Max Patrick (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1961) 293.

    Google Scholar 

  5. We attempt a similar definition of utopian literature in Diskin Clay & Andrea Purvis,Four Island Utopias: Being Plato’s Atlantis, Euhemeros of Messene’s Panchaia, Iamboulos’ Island of the Sun, Sir Francis Bacon’s New Atlantis, ser Focus Philosophical Library (Newburyport, MA: Focus Publishing, 1999) 1–15.

    Google Scholar 

  6. In hisThe Open Society and its Enemies, vol. 1,The Spell of Plato, 5th ed. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1966 [1st ed. London: Routledge, 1945]), especially 86–87 and 138–139.

  7. This emerges from Erasmus’ letter to Hutten (note 3 above): “Secundum librum prius scripserat per ocium, mox per occasionem primum adiecit ex tempore. Atque hinc nonnulla dictionis inaequalitas” (“He had written the second book first in his leisure hours, and added the first book on the spur of the moment later, when the occasion offered. Some of the unevenness of style is due to this”) (ed. Allen 21 line 259ff.; Huizinga 238). R. J. Schoeck, “On Reading More’s Utopia as a Dialogue,”Moreana 22 (1969) 19–32 makes it clear that the dialogic character ofUtopia throws More’s attitude to his project into doubt; as do Clay & Purvis (note 5 above) 9–11.

  8. “obliquo ductu,” The Yale Edition of the Complete Works of St. Thomas More, Vol. 4:Utopia, ed. Edward Surtz, S. J., and J. H. Hexter (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1965), 98.30–100.3.

    Google Scholar 

  9. John Carey’sFaber Book of Utopias (note 1 above) has the virtue of economical and informative introductions to the works excerpted.

  10. The text of Montaigne’s essay (in John Florio’s translation of 1603) is given by Frank Kermode in his excellent Arden edition of Shakespeare’s play,The Tempest, 6th ed. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1958) 1445–147.

  11. James Harrington,The Commonwealth of Oceana andA System of Politics, ed. J.G.A. Pocock, ser, Cambridge texts in the history of political thought (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University press, 1992).

    Google Scholar 

  12. In French, the title isL’an deux mille quatre cent quarante; the English translation of W. Hooper, M.D., adopted by Claeys & Sargent (London: G. Robinson, 1772; repr. New York: Garland, 1974), hasMemoirs of the Year Two Thousand Five Hundred.

  13. Lucian’s description of the Selenitai is placed in a large context by Scott T. Montgomery,The Moon in the Western Imagination (Tucson, Arizona: The University of Arizona Press, 1999) 30–43.

    Google Scholar 

  14. Louis-Sébastien Mercier,L’an deux mille quatre cent quarante: Rêve s’il en fut jamais, ed. Raymond Trousson, ser. Collection Ducros (Bordeux: Ducros, 1971) 80.

    Google Scholar 

  15. See Pocock (note 11 above). xvi andOceana 18, 35, and 224.

    Google Scholar 

  16. As I insist under pain of great unpopularity in “The Invention of Atlantis: An Anatomy of Platonic Fiction,”Proceedings of the Boston Area Colloquium in Ancient Philosophy 15 (1999) 1–19.

  17. Ed. Jacques Brunschwig and Geoffrey E. R. Lloyd, with the collaboration of Pierre Pellegrin, translated under the supervision of Catherine Porter (Cambridge, Massachusetts/London, England: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2000) 163–179.

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Classical Studies, Duke University, USA

    Diskin Clay

Authors
  1. Diskin Clay
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article

Clay, D. The reader’s guide tothe Utopia reader . Int class trad 7, 548–554 (2001). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02688457

Download citation

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02688457

Keywords

Search

Navigation