lit201 - st thomas moore - utopia

Lit201 - Lect1 - Week 6

St Thomas Moore - steely resolve, family man, a devoted husband, who had lived for four years as a labourer in a Carthusian charter house (a strict monastic boarding house).

He was a scathing critic of corruption - he was none the less a zealous defender of the rights of monarchies and of the Church. Beneath the splendour of his garments, as lord chancellor, he wore a hair shirt. A zealous defender of the Catholic faith, he condemned people to death for publicly opposing and undermining the faith. The old uncompromising faith and the new humanism, this presented cross roads.

His life and his death are well known to Catholics at least, although the play 'a man for all seasons' went some of the way to passing the story into popular imagination. Moore was, and is, a figure of difficulty. I once heard a story from someone I knew who went to the Tower of London, and taking one of the tours in the tower, he was appalled to hear the tour guide as a religious nutter and extremist who died for some bizarre and minor principle, and this view has equal currency for certain none Catholics as the opposite view does for Catholics. For many people in the modern world the idea of dying for a principle when the alternative is the life of comfort, prosperity and favour must seem strange. The idea that people are willing to give their lives over theological, seemingly, minor details, is something that the western world has chosen not to understand. And now, ignores the threat of radical Islam through it's physical and moral ruin. It is easier to dismiss such extreme examples rather than to see that they relate to our own destinies temporal and physical in a most interesting way. Moore was in most respects a renaissance man, an enlightened man. The idea goes is that the 'enlightened' man doesn't die for theological truths, because every 'enlightened' has his own truths, and if one is happy than there is no problem.

The reformation, the fatigue that would eventually follow it, these things ushered in the modern age. And Moore stands, and his example stands, as both a foreshadowing of that modern age and a example of the very conflict that helped usher it in.

Utopia not only reflects this it goes beyond it in its eerily prophetic and subtle description of the utopia, or ideal state, which comes at the considerable cost of human freedom. The key interlocutor, Hithladay, with his propensity to absolutism, extremisn and misanthropy, could well be an accurate sketch of modern man dislocated from his community, who when pushed to extremes responds extremely.

We must understand the text's form as a dialogue. (It is like the republic, being the seminal work of its kind, the original work of the genre) We need to understand that not only the dialogue form, but the use of character to advance complexities of meaning and motivation, we need to understand its function as a social commentary of Moore's times, we need to understand it as a psychological critique of the dangers of the mindset that is opposed to the realist mindset. And we need to explore the use of satire, irony, wordplay and humour to explore the completing claims of personal and social responsibility and the philosophical withdrawal or the political action. What is the role of the philosopher? What should be the limits of the state as an individual? These are some of the questions that Moore asks us. A critique states that Moore's Utopia stands along side Shakespeare's Hamlet as a piece that caused so many people to come to expert conclusions and to oppose one another. We should not divide the man for all seasons into several men for all seasons, in other word we need to come to some conclusions, is it straight forward or ironic, literal or satirical, and we need to include this conclusion with the tradition of learning he assumes his learning contemporaries were conversent with (for example he wrote in Latin), and we must understand the literary devices, etc etc.

We need to bear in mind that Moore is assuming that his readers are intelligent enough to understand the depth of his work.

Solving the riddle - Rafael Hithladay - Is Moore himself, proposing through his character Hithladay, a state such as the one described in his work, or whether he is satirising his character, Hithladay or rather the mindset that is characterised in Hithladay, the mindset that generates such schemes.

There is no census on Moore himself, regarded by some as a Saint, by others as a lunatic. Just as there is no consensus on Moore himself there is no sense on his work as well. Whether all or part of his work should be taken seriously.

A monument of Moore is erected in Soviet Russia and soon after the Euthanasia society of America elects him as the main proponent of their cause.

"An attempt to resolve the contradictions of his own divided impulses."

One of the first approaches to this text involves the idea that Moore himself does not hold a particular position, but rather he simply presents the opposing views without giving any indication of his own views. He puts forward competing positions.

Rafael Hythladay is simple straightforward interlocutor and we should just take what he says at face value.

"The fiction Moore creates of himself arises from Moore's sense of alienation, his haunting ambivalence and his perpetual self estrangement all of which have their roots in shame and guilt. It seems to be an example of 16th century Nihilism."

Moore himself was emotionally divided and these divisions make an impact on the work.

1. Moore holds no opinion. Simply expresses opposing views.

2. Hythladay is just a straight forward character.

3. The work expresses the contradictions and anxieties in the author's own nature.

4. What we see in Utopia are two ways of life dramatised and in conflict with each other. And these two ways are represented by Hythladay and Moore. Moore the character is making a case for the civic minded approach to public life and that he is deeply suspicious of Hythladay and his utopia.

Hythladay puts forward this Utopia as an ideal state - Moore is critical of aspects of the utopia and the mindset that generates it.

3 main characters in the work - Moore - Peter Jiles and Rafael Hythladay - Hythladay dominates the work in keeping with his temperament, his personality. It is Hythladay who proposes the Utopia, the ideal state.

Book One describes how Moore, on a business trip to Antwerp, met Peter Jiles, a humanist scholar, who in turn introduced him to Rafael Hythladay. Now, when we read this it has all the air of historical realism or being an accurate account of events that really took place and the readers of the work would have inclined to this understanding because Moore the character did what Moore the author did, represented the King on business. A discussion ensues in which Hythladay and the other characters, principally Moore, debate the state of the world and the benefits or the importance to serve in politics and public life, or should someone withdraw from the world. This is the nature of the debate and reflects the current social and political climate. By the end of this discussion it is clear that Moore and Hythladay a philosophically poles apart, Hythladay refers to a race of people who are called the Utopians.

It's significant that the introduction of the Utopians comes about at the point of the conversation where Hythladay and Moore disagree completely about the role of the intellectual in public life. It is at this point that Hythladay introduces the Utopia. This seems very simple, in book Two, that Hythladay describes the ideal state, its law its customs, how marriage is conducted, how war is conducted how society is organised. It all seems, the way it proceeds, is very straightfoward (in the tradition of Plato's republic) just as there are many meanings in Plato's republic it is the same here.


Book Two focuses on the Utopians, founded by Utopis.

one clue for us in interpreting whether Moore is serious of sarcastic in his work - is the title -

R.S Sylvester has said that the work concerns the best state of a common wealth and the island called Utopia - one is not necessarily the same as the other - Utopia is not necessarily the best state of a commonwealth. In other words Utopia, the place in the book, need not be seen as synonymous as the best state of a commonwealth.