Sir Thomas More's Sir Thomas More's UtopiaUtopia Sir Thomas More's Sir Thomas More's UtopiaUtopia

Sir Thomas More's Sir Thomas More's UtopiaUtopia

Thomas More   (1478 - 1535)

Born:  February 7, 1478London, England

Died:  July 6, 1535Tower Hill, London, England

Sir Thomas More's Sir Thomas More's UtopiaUtopia

• About four centuries before "Star Trek," three centuries before Jules Verne and his Time Machine, and two centuries before Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels, there was Sir Thomas More's Utopia.

Sir Thomas More's Sir Thomas More's UtopiaUtopia

• Utopia, which translates roughly as "no place" in Greek, was published in 1516. The book played a key role in the Humanist awakening of the 16th century, which moved away from Medieval otherworldliness toward Renaissance secularism.

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• Written in Latin, Utopia was inspired by Plato's Republic and the accounts of explorers such as Amerigo Vespucci. It is also largely based on the voyages of More himself, specifically to the Netherlands.

                                                                 

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• The term "Utopia" has come to mean an idyllic, visionary Shang-ri-la type of community. However, when More derived the term from the Greek, it literally meant "nowhere."

                                                                 

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• Much of More's book was extracted from and influenced by the Bible, especially from the "Christian Humanists" biblical interpretations that formed a vanguard of social criticism in his time.

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• More yearned to change his world for the better. He saw that wanton greed and terrible poverty were often irrevocably bound to one another, and he argued vehemently for the closing of the separation between classes.

                                                                 

Sir Thomas More's Sir Thomas More's UtopiaUtopia Sir Thomas More's Sir Thomas More's UtopiaUtopia

ReferencesReferences

• Thomas More. (2008, February 22). In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved 14:16, February 26, 2008, from http://en.wikipedia.org/