This critical analysis is of a gobbett taken from Ralph Robinson’s 1551 English translation of Utopia by Sir Thomas More (1478-1535). The first edition was printed in Latin and published in Antwerp in 1516. The description given on the title page of the first edition is ‘a really splendid little book, as entertaining as it is instructive’. Written in an age when rash expression of opinion were apt to land one in the tower, More adopts a literary form which makes Utopia entertaining, but also creates a context in which his position remains ambiguous. Utopia is written in two parts. Part 1 takes the form of an imaginary conversation between More, a fictitious voyager called Raphael Hythlodaye and a real-life civil servant, Peter Gilles, on a classic dilemma of sixteenth century humanists, of whether a philosopher should enter royal service. When writing the passage in 1516, More’s desire to enter the kings council was already strong’. The conversation also provides More with the opportunity to censure specific injustices within English and European society at the time. Part 2 of Utopia is a description by Hythlodaye of the distant commonwealth of Utopia- an island inhabited by happy, healthy, public-spirited democrats and communists where money and private property do not exist and where conventional attitudes to wealth are turned upside down. In order to reach the international audience of humanists More had to write in Latin. Renaissance humanists liked to write to each other in classical Latin. As Vernacular and medieval Latin were considered to be shot through with barbarisms, terms reflecting the feudal social order and its values rather than classical rationalism and austerity. It was published abroad partly because English printers had not yet effectively entered the continental market, where as Antwerp was one of the leading centers of European commerce including the rapidly expanding book trade. Also because Erasmus with the help of Giles could see the book through the press. The old idea that More feared the book might do him harm with Henry and Wolsey was nonsense, there was no secrecy and the book found a ready audience in England.
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