Virtual Seminar:
Thomas More's Utopia as Political Literature.


The purpose of the slow-reading e-seminar on More's Utopia, sponsored by Interactive EMLS is to read the text slowly beyond this truism, we intend to discourage the practice of "jumping to conclusions". We shall have to agree that we understand a passage before we move on to the next, or before we try to find out to what other points in the work it is relevant. By "understand a passage", let us mean that we agree on the difficulties of it, or that we have been through a satisfactory number of hypotheses. We shall refer to the Latin text and to available translations, the Latin text being the ultimate authority.

An interesting them to guide our reading, a theme that might appeal to the broadest range of academic disciplines should involve both the content of the work (here politics) and the form thereof (herethe literary form). A famous XXth-century dystopist, George Orwell, once wrote that his design in his life and art was to raise political writing into a form of art. More was both a great political thinker and a great writer. Not only for his style, but also for the complexity of the construction, of the general framework of Utopia. Poetics and politics could be a good initial approach, especially if we bear the and in mind....

More's Utopia is the eponymous text of a genre that had begun long before, perhaps even before Plato. The astounding descent of Utopia attests the vitality of both the aesthetic and the philosophical projects. This e-seminar might eventually lead us to reflect on the modes of expression of a political philosophy. Are there utopias ("utopia" being here defined as the fictionalised presentation of a theory, which is a common use of the term) in other philosophical fields? This would be only a later stage in the reflection. We might decide to have pauses in the reading, to attempt an assessment of the portions read so far, or since the previous interruption.

Any inquiries about this seminar should be directed to Luc Borot at lb@alor.univ-montp3.fr.

Registration Form for the
Thomas More Virtual Seminar

Name

E-mail Address

Institution


Status: Graduate Student Faculty Other (specify)

Languages:
English: Read Read and Write Neither Read nor Write
French: Read Read and Write Neither Read nor Write
Latin: Read Read and Write Neither Read nor Write


Please provide any other information that you feel is relevant to you application:

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[version 0.9d, SNM:25 July 1995]