EMLS-UTOPIA LIST ARCHIVE Date: Tue, 24 Oct 1995 03:45:34 -0700 From: owner-emls-utopia Apparently-To: emls-utopia-outgoing Sender: owner-emls-utopia Precedence: bulk To send a message to the list, use the address: emls-utopia@unixg.ubc.ca To send commands to the listserver, use the address: majordomo@unixg.ubc.ca I will start sending messages about the seminar in the next 24 hours, and we shall be ready to start within a couple of days. I meet my 'liveware' seminar students in Montpellier tomorrow October 25, and they will introduce themselves. Since time differences between our respective continents are pretty important, don't worry if there's a lapse of several hours between your sending the message and the diffusion of the message to the list. This may be obvious to those of you who are used to moderated lists, but I must insist since a part of the seminar will be linked to the seminar I am leading here: 24 hours 'live' may amount to 36 hours' delay until you receive my students' seminar reports. The Latin and English texts of Utopia are being prepared; they will be available on the EMLS server at UBC. I follow the new Cambridge parallel text (Logan, Adams, Miller, eds), my students will have the earlier Logan-Adams edition published by CUP in the Cambridge texts in the history of political thought series. I also own a copy of the facsimile of the 1518 edition, with the commentaries and French translation of Father Andre Prevost. The description of the course is on the iEMLS server, at the URL: http://unixg.ubc.ca:7001/0/e-sources/emls/emlshome.html You can then point to the iEMLS section. We are all looking forward to working with you on the text of More's Utopia, and hope that we shall all be so civilised and humane in our debates that we shall desire to see our discussion methods realised in the actual world (see the last lines of Book II...). As my Montpellier colleague Francois Rabelais said not so long ago (just a few centuries), verite est fille du temps, or veritas temporis filia, or like Thomas More: Time Trieth Truth. Yours, Luc Borot **********************TIME TRIETH TRUTH******************** Luc Borot home 33-67 52 07 98 fax 33-67 14 24 65 work 33-67 14 24 49/33-67 14 24 48 Centre d'Etudes et de Recherches sur la Renaissance Anglaise Universite Paul Valery --- Montpellier (France) Mime-Version: 1.0 Date: Tue, 24 Oct 1995 19:00:05 +0100 To: emls-utopia@unixg.ubc.ca From: lb@alor.univ-montp3.fr (Luc Borot) Subject: 1st pre-seminar post Sender: owner-emls-utopia Precedence: bulk Status: RO X-Status: Tuesday, October 24 1995 Pre-seminar post n¡1 From Luc Borot * To list members I am most glad to welcome all of you to our Interactive EMLS seminar on More's *Utopia*. I must heartily thank my distant colleagues from EMLS to have offered me their hospitality for this venture. Being in Southern Europe to moderate a seminar that takes place nowhere and everywhere at the same time, with the help of people and machines located in Northern America gives me the impression that Tom More would have had to find another term than 'utopia' for his island: we can now work together without having to be in the same place. I must also thank my colleague and friend Daniel Savey, who manages the technical side at the Montpellier end of the electronic seminar. The virtual seminar is nowhere and everywhere, but in the real world, my students are in a very particular place, we shall meet in a particular room at a given time on a given day of the week. Until now, I felt like the sovereign of Utopia, the Ademus, 'the one who has no people', but since you have begun to request your inclusion in the seminar, I am reassured: More's oxymoronic naming will not be proved false. This is the sort of document I will mail every week before meeting my students in class. It will be an abstract of the points I will present in the 'liveware' seminar. Some of this will be flat and stale to experienced historians of political ideas among you, but there are students among us, and I will be addressing students who need to have a clearer notion of methodology and historical categories than they have received in undergraduate studies. Please react to the list, or to me personally if brotherly correction is at stake. My email address is: lb@alor.univ-montp3.fr * Utopianism and political philosophy Political philosophy is not any sort of philosophy. It involves a relationship to both practical considerations and more abstract moral values. It is always related to a collective practical experience. When it involves the individual, the latter is involved under several respects: as subject, citizen, moral being, taxpayer, religious being, viz. always in a relation to other human beings, to the community under various forms (State, kingdom, commonwealth, society, polity, church), or yet to some form of transcendence. Contrary to most other forms of philosophy, it is liable to several modes of exposition. Political philosophy is indeed liable to be presented as a fiction. Plato had presented all kinds of philosophy as dialogues, using very elaborate devices to 'stage' the context of the dialogues to add further meaning to the exchange of ideas between his real or imaginary speakers. He can even be said to have been one of the inventors of the utopian mode of presentation of political philosophy, though he did not invent the word. Utopia as a genre is made possible because it is meant to present a form of philosophy that concerns the practical life of human communities. Therefore, its content can easily be framed inside a fiction, inside an artefact. A fable or parable makes the message apparently more realistic and easier to admit, but it also conceals some of the possible objections that a debater would be likely to raise. Imagine epistemology made into a novel, or metaphysics into a short story or poem (see Lucretius, Pope, Voltaire): it becomes a didactic use of literary forms. A utopia is a fiction in its own right and a philosophical treatise in its own right. * The apparent frame The originality of More's *Utopia* is that it encloses the description of the ideal commonwealth within a dialogue: More is the conscious heir to Plato's *Timaeus*, *Critias*, and *Republic*. Like Plato in the 'utopian' sections of these dialogues,(1) it is well known that More first describes the sorry plight of his civilisation, and then only sets out to expose the ideal remedies. More's utopia is a fiction within a fiction: the 'framing' narrative introduces persona Morus,(2) in the Low Countries, meeting his friend Peter Giles with the traveller Hythlodaeus. Hythlodaeus is the mouthpiece of the initial satire criticising England, then the first 'frame' is closed, with the promise of a second Book, describing the blessed island and commonwealth of Utopia. Hythlodaeus's narrative and exposition of Utopian life is framed a second time within his dialogue with persona Morus. The frame is closed again when Morus concludes on his doubts as to the desirability of applying utopian devices to reform English society. * The hidden frame More is at the same time a great statesman, a great philosopher, a great writer, and a lover of books, who knows how to use this (still?) new medium to convey his message. As he is also a remarkable humorist and satirist, he knows how desirable and effective distancing irony can be. Therefore, for the 1518 edition, the book printed with letters of introduction, of praise, of reaction, from famous humanist figures, and he appends the same sort of material at the end, including a letter about a man who wanted to become the first bishop of the island of Utopia. Thus, the reality of the fiction is attested by the alleged reaction of an imaginary character mentioned in a letter by a genuine writer! Everything is done to arouse doubts in the reader: the question 'how desirable is this polity?' becomes 'how real is it?', or, for more naive readers (if any humanist can be called a naive reader): 'how far is it?'. It has all the appearance of a tale, and it seems to arouse practical reactions. Where does the utopia begin? where does it end? * Our discussion Before we tackle the text of the tale, we might give these questions some consideration. When my students are ready to participate, one of them will write to the list to report on the issues that were raised in class. This won't happen until a few days, since they still have to receive an e-mail address and learn how to use it. Until they are ready, let us begin to exchange a few ideas on this issue, and get to know ourselves. NOTES 1. Here 'utopian' is anachronic, but relevant. Raymond Queneau and the experimental writers of his OULIPO (OUvroir de LIttŽrature POtentielle) would have called Plato's devices, in relation to More's, 'plagiarism by anticipation'. 2. I use the name 'More' for the writer; 'Morus' is More's Latin name, which is that of the character and narrator of *Utopia*. **********************TIME TRIETH TRUTH******************** Luc Borot home 33-67 52 07 98 fax 33-67 14 24 65 work 33-67 14 24 49/33-67 14 24 48 Centre d'Etudes et de Recherches sur la Renaissance Anglaise Universite Paul Valery --- Montpellier (France) Mime-Version: 1.0 Date: Wed, 25 Oct 1995 23:07:23 +0100 To: emls-utopia@unixg.ubc.ca From: lb@alor.univ-montp3.fr (Luc Borot) Subject: 1:2 - 1st seminar over Sender: owner-emls-utopia Precedence: bulk >From Luc Borot Wednesday, October 25 1995 Dear fellow-utopians, Greetings from the Montpellier students who attended the first 'liveware' session of this semester. The points I introduced were mostly those I presented in my previous post. The first student report on this session should reach the list by Tuesday. It may seem odd from a North-American academic point of view, but some of these French graduate students have had VERY little contact with computers, and several are complete innocents as regards those machines: I'll have to use the most advanced first, then the others will adapt and become as fluent as a humanist academic can be with a machine... if you allow me this bit of self-derision. I think that we should take the opportunity of this technical and pedagogical delay in the setting up of the liveware-virtual seminars connection to start the discussion between us, to get to know each other, by an exchange (I'm ready for criticism) on my suggestions about the pre- and post- text strategies. Where does the text start? where does it end? is the book just the text? is the text more than the 'tale' in 2 books? To your clubs and sticks, o partners! Yours before bed, Luc Borot **********************TIME TRIETH TRUTH******************** Luc Borot home 33-67 52 07 98 fax 33-67 14 24 65 work 33-67 14 24 49/33-67 14 24 48 Centre d'Etudes et de Recherches sur la Renaissance Anglaise Universite Paul Valery --- Montpellier (France) Mime-Version: 1.0 Date: Sat, 28 Oct 1995 17:50:36 +0100 To: emls-utopia@unixg.ubc.ca From: lb@alor.univ-montp3.fr (Luc Borot) Subject: RE: 1st pre-seminar post Sender: owner-emls-utopia Precedence: bulk This exchange took place off list between Roy Flannagan and myself, after Roy's reception of the first posts. He's suggested that I post it to everybody. >From: NAME: Roy Flannagan > FUNC: English > TEL: 614 593-2829 >To: MX%"lb@alor.univ-montp3.fr"@OUVAX@MRGATE@OUVAX > > At what point near the beginning, Luc, do you see satire against the > present state of things in England, and how can you tell it when you > see it? Roy Flannagan Roy, I see it in the discussion between Hythlodaeus, Morton and the lawyer in Bk I. Such phrases as 'sheep devour men', 'those greedy creatures, sheep', for instance, are typical of the satirical mode. Luc **********************TIME TRIETH TRUTH******************** Luc Borot home 33-67 52 07 98 fax 33-67 14 24 65 work 33-67 14 24 49/33-67 14 24 48 Centre d'Etudes et de Recherches sur la Renaissance Anglaise Universite Paul Valery --- Montpellier (France) Mime-Version: 1.0 Date: Sun, 29 Oct 1995 18:13:48 +0100 To: emls-utopia@unixg.ubc.ca From: lb@alor.univ-montp3.fr (Luc Borot) Subject: Re: Post pre-seminar post... Sender: owner-emls-utopia Precedence: bulk At 10:26 29/10/1995, Jean-Francois Vallee asked (I cut parts of your post, excuse-moi): >To what point can we really compare Plato's "utopian" dialogue >and More's? >The similarities seem compelling: both imagine an ideal society >and choose to do so by using the dialogue form. >But the differences are also interesting. In the _Republic_, the ideal >polis is only speculated upon, it exists only in Socrates's discourse >(as somebody says somewhere in the dialogue). Pour sur! yet, if you consider *Timaeus* and *Critias*, Atlantis is elsewhere, it 'was', in the past, in a sort of 'uchronia' of the past. Plato is not only concerned with ideal realms in the *Republic*. >In _Utopia_ the ideal >society is fictionally "represented". This is a crucial difference >according to me. It is even underlined in the anemolian Hexastichon Indeed you're right to stress the importance of this stanza. The humanism of More is bent on surpassing Antiquity, probably (in part) because Christianity surpassed paganism. >The dialogic structures of the two "utopias" are also very different. >More did not write his dialogue in the "Platonic mode" like some >commentators have suggested. It is much closer to a Ciceronian type >dialogue (with moments of Lucian for the satiric dimension mentioned >in an earlier post). By bringing them together, I never meant to present Plato as More's source par excellence (pardon my English). Your reaction is interesting because it is typical of the sort of reaction likely to be aroused by More's platonic masks, which I also assumed in my first post, more for pedagogical reasons than by Morean irony. The dialogical framing of the work is meant to get the reader to think: you don't directly enter the description of the commonwealth; you are made to wait outside. This is platonic strategy. For More, assuming a platonic stance, or pretending to rival with Plato, is an ironical structural device. >Indeed, one finds much less dialectical argument than >rhetorical exposition in the debate between persona More and Hythlodaeus. >One must also remember that dialogue gives way to monologue in the Second >Book of _Utopia_ (at least until the return fo persona More in the last lines). For the rest, I agree that we are closer to a rhetorical Ciceronian dialogue, but with a complexity of strategic framing likelier to act on the reader like socratic maieutics. Hythlodaeus uses rhetoric to convince persona Morus --and the reader through him-- but More the writer frames the description in a manner much more akin to what you'd find in Plato. Rhetorical stategy shouldn't be confused with narrative strategy in the service of philosophical awakening. See my point? Yours, Luc **********************TIME TRIETH TRUTH******************** Luc Borot home 33-67 52 07 98 fax 33-67 14 24 65 work 33-67 14 24 49/33-67 14 24 48 Centre d'Etudes et de Recherches sur la Renaissance Anglaise Universite Paul Valery --- Montpellier (France) Date: Fri, 3 Nov 1995 03:18:01 -0800 From: owner-emls-utopia Subject: More (and more) news Sender: owner-emls-utopia Precedence: bulk Apparently-To: emls-utopia-outgoing Dear partners and fellow-travellers, Should I apologise for the poor pun in the header to this message? I won't. More and Erasmus have shown us the way, so why not follow in their footsteps? To complete the information on the seminar, in case some of you hadn't visited our www site, may I recommend the following URL: http://edziza.arts.ubc.ca/english/iemls/vsem/borot.html It will give further information on this venture. I'm informed that the Latin text of Utopia will be made available by our partners at the Oxford Text Archive within the next 24 hours. I heartily thank them, and in particular Lou Burnard, who has worked on the preparation of the text for us: a very difficult task, considering the state of the electronic document deposited. As soon as I have the addresses from which you can download the text, I shall inform you. When we start discussing the text, can we agree that every new point raised in a message will be accompanied by a copy of the passage in Latin and/or English? Remember to update the subject lines of your messages, and to change them when you introduce a new point. This will enable new members to keep up with the discussion threads. I may do it when I resend the messages, but I would appreciate if you did it yourselves. This will be particularly useful when we have parallel threads, as always happens in discussion lists. Read you soon, Luc Borot PS: this is a re-send: the server stripped the subject line, which makes the pun-line silly! ************************TIME TRIETH TRUTH************************ *e-mail: lb@alor.univ-montp3.fr - lb@bred.univ-montp3.fr *Prof. Luc Borot - Centre d'Etudes et de Recherches sur la Renaissance Anglaise *Universite Paul-Valery, Montpellier (France) *phone: 33-67142448 - 33-67142449 - fax 33-67142465 Date: Fri, 3 Nov 1995 05:29:26 -0800 From: owner-emls-utopia Subject: OTA Utopias available NOW Sender: owner-emls-utopia Precedence: bulk Apparently-To: emls-utopia-outgoing Dear all, As promised, here are sites where you can find the texts of Utopia, as prepared for us by Lou Burnard of the Oxford Text Archive: World Wide Web: There's a page at http://info.ox.ac.uk/~archive/utopia.html which points in the right direction. FTP: You can also access the texts directly from ftp://ota.ox.ac.uk/pub/ota/public/english/More/2080.sgm and ftp://ota.ox.ac.uk/pub/ota/public/latin/More/2079.sgm login: anonymous password: your e-mail address. Please retrieve and enjoy, Yours, Luc ************************TIME TRIETH TRUTH************************ *e-mail: lb@alor.univ-montp3.fr - lb@bred.univ-montp3.fr *Prof. Luc Borot - Centre d'Etudes et de Recherches sur la Renaissance Anglaise *Universite Paul-Valery, Montpellier (France) *phone: 33-67142448 - 33-67142449 - fax 33-67142465 Date: Fri, 3 Nov 1995 06:41:23 -0800 From: owner-emls-utopia Subject: The OTA texts Sender: owner-emls-utopia Precedence: bulk Apparently-To: emls-utopia-outgoing A few words of warning for list members new to e-text usage, and to all those that might be shocked by the encoding: * The OTA text is encoded with the Standard General Mark-up Language (SGML). This encoding language is meant to indicate the specifications of the text's materiality (pages, speech prefixes, special characters). * If you can't access an SGML-compatible viewer to see the text without the codes, but can use a WWW client like Mosaic or Netscape, use it to open the OTA texts from your hard disk: most code entities will vanish. You can then print the text out from your www browser. * Once you're there, save the document as a text file. * Open it with a word-processor. * As paragraphs are marked by double paragraphs, replace double paragraphs with a sign of your choice (e.g. =A7). * As lines are separated by single paragraphs, if you want to justify your document, replace the remaining paragraphs by spaces. * Lastly, replace your symbols by paragraphs. * If you really are bothered by the hyphen and mdash codes described in the OTA header, replace the codes by anything you like... viz. the hyphen code by nothing (erase), and the mdash code by an m-dash (the long dash) or two hyphens (--). IN ANY CASE: preserve a copy of the original encoded text, as SGML has become a genuine standard for electronic edition: one day or another, you will have an SGML-compatible software at the office or at home, and what now seems a completely cumbersome and useless gargle will be an essential quality. Cheerio, Luc Borot ************************TIME TRIETH TRUTH************************ *e-mail: lb@alor.univ-montp3.fr - lb@bred.univ-montp3.fr *Prof. Luc Borot - Centre d'Etudes et de Recherches sur la Renaissance Angla= ise *Universite Paul-Valery, Montpellier (France) *phone: 33-67142448 - 33-67142449 - fax 33-67142465 Date: Sun, 5 Nov 1995 07:53:13 -0800 (PST) From: owner-emls-utopia Subject: Montpellier seminar calendar Sender: owner-emls-utopia Precedence: bulk Sunday, November 5 1995 Though the virtual seminar is only going to focus on More's *Utopia*, here is the general calendar of the 'liveware' seminar in Montpellier: November 8: More's *Utopia*: Formal problems (narrative, dialogue, description) 2/2. November 15: More's *Utopia*: the model commonwealth November 22: More's *Utopia*: the contradictions of equality November 29: More's *Utopia*: reason of state in Utopia, or the limits of idealism December 6: Richard Overton's *Arraignment of Mr Persecution* (1645): Dialogue satire and the forbidden stage December 13: Overton's *Arraignment...*: Satire, the law and the people December 20: James Harrington's *Oceana* (1656): history, fiction and utopia >>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Christmas Break !!! January 10 1996: Harrington's *Oceana*: utopia and (political) science January 17: Harrington's *Oceana*: the limits of utopian writing January 24: Harrington's *System of Politics* (1660-61?): science of politics January 31: Harrington's *System of Politics*: utopianism in a deductive system If any of you knew of a recent edition of Overton's text, I'd be extremely thankful to hear about it. I use the facsimile that was published 50 years ago in Haller and Davies (eds) *Tracts on Liberty* (3 vols). After a little re-writing, the report on the first seminar will be mailed by Mme Susan Reinyers. In a few hours today, my own pre-seminar post nb 2. I remind you that discussion is still open on the first issues raised last weeks. If any of you want to react to some of the titles in this calendar, don't hesitate to do so to the list: there is some kind of consistency in all this, though the end may look a trifle repetitive or self-contradictory (it is supposed to, anyway...). Yours, Luc Borot **********************TIME TRIETH TRUTH******************** Luc Borot home 33-67 52 07 98 fax 33-67 14 24 65 work 33-67 14 24 49/33-67 14 24 48 Centre d'Etudes et de Recherches sur la Renaissance Anglaise Universite Paul Valery --- Montpellier (France) Date: Sun, 5 Nov 1995 09:47:51 -0800 (PST) From: owner-emls-utopia Subject: Pre-seminar post nb 2 Sunday November 5 1995 Sender: owner-emls-utopia Precedence: bulk The second liveware seminar, on November 8, will again focus on problems of form in More's *Utopia*, but with more insistence on ideology. When asked by Roy Flannagan what I meant by 'satire' in the first dialogue, I replied by mentioning the famous Morton episode. It will be worth focussing on it when our slow-reading reaches that point. On Wednesday, we shall focus on the satire on money and jewels in Book II. In a truly erasmian vein, More depicts the reversal of values operated by the Utopians by having Hythlodaeus quote the mothers and children confusing the adorned ambassadors with jesters. For those who have already retrieved their copy of the English text, it can be found between "I never saw a clearer instance of the opposite impressions that different customs make on people, than I observed in the ambassadors of the Anemolians..." and "...even though they know him to be so covetous and base-minded that notwithstanding all his wealth he will not part with one farthing of it to them as long as he lives." In the Latin text, it is between "Itaque haec tam diuersa ab reliquis gentibus instituta, quam diuersas itidem animorum affectiones pariant, nunquam aeque mihi atque in Anemoliorum legatis inclaruit." and "idque cum eos tam sordidos atque auaros cognoscunt, ut habeant certo certius ex tanto nummorum cumulo, uiuentibus illis ne unum quidem nummulum unquam ad se uenturum." The moral interpretation follows, but I think the fable itself (I mean: the fable as story within the story) ends at that point. This whole episode has a function in the narrative structure of the work: Morus is made to understand the thoroughness of Utopian detachment through a satirical parable, not unlike the popular adage (or emblem) from Esopus on the donkey carrying relics. It is a satire of European vanity and of vanity in general; it also verifies the biblical exclamation 'Out of the mouths of babes and sucklings' in Ps 8:2 and Mat 21:16. The uselessness of gold and money in general is not the only element of the satire: luxury in garments and jewels, marks of distinction, social difference based on anything non-natural, or independent on personal merit are being attacked. The beloved erasmian theme of education and manners is behind this fable; the morosophos of Rotterdam can't have disagreed with the point made there. What strikes me in this episode is that its form is more subtle than that of Erasmus's own dialogues: as H is the second-degree narrator, Morus is the first-degree listener of the story. He reports on a report. Considering the layers of "pre- and post-" text already mentioned last week, can we trust Morus as reporter? The construction of credibility in *Utopia* relies on the questionable reliability of the reporters: proverbs on the unreliability of travellers' yarns are many in classical and modern languages, but persona-Morus trusts H. Is H more reliable as traveller or as scholar? Check the man's credentials: NOT a sailor by profession (which would discredit him), but a scholar (credential nb 1); he travelled with Vespucci (credential nb 2), he left him (negative feature) as he volunteered (credential nb 3 for courage) to explore new found lands in the Southern hemisphere (about which there are very few direct testimonies: 2nd negative feature). Yet, he is introduced to Morus by Peter Giles, a real person turned into a character (as Morton will be). Credibility and suspicion are likely to be equally aroused. * My hypothesis (have your guns and clubs ready): H's credibility seems to come from the virtues he praises among the Utopians: a man who loves these virtues, who has so thoroughly observed and studied them, must be a good man. Mind you: I do not pretend that this is the only possibility, I'm just testing this particular clue. * My questions to the list: * Does this credibility issue seem particularly important to you? * Some critics (like JC Davis, *Utopia and the Ideal Society* (CUP, 1981) think that More, and utopists in general, hold a pessimistic view of mankind, which partly explains why they so much depend on 'forcible' devices to make men live together in harmony and equality. Yet, is perfectibility --the capacity to improve oneself or to be improved by education-- the sign of a bad nature? if education is so important and so efficient, as the conclusion of the aforesaid text implies, is More such a pessimist? * How are we supposed to take the final sentence of the work: "Interea quemadmodum haud possum omnibus assentiri quae dicta sunt, alioqui ab homine citra controuersiam eruditissimo simul & rerum humanarum peritissimo, ita facile confiteor permulta esse in Utopiensium republica, quae in nostris ciuitatibus optarim uerius, quam sperarim.", and especially the final "optarim verius, quam sperarim"? Our e-translation interprets: "In the meanwhile, though it must be confessed that he is both a very learned man, and a person who has obtained a great knowledge of the world, I cannot perfectly agree to everything he has related; however, there are many things in the Commonwealth of Utopia that I rather wish, than hope, to see followed in our governments." The latest version of the Adams translation (CUP, 1995) says: "Meantime, while I can hardly agree with everything he said (though he is a man of unquestionable learning and enormous experience of human affairs), yet I freely confess that in the Utopian commonwealth there are very many features that in our own societies I would wish rather than expect to see." * Can we understand this "optarim verius, quam sperarim" as a mark of diffidence from More, a form of preterition reducing everything he wrote in that book to a dangerous scheme? Or does Morus suggest that 'levelling' of conditions is a danger, thus protecting More from the accusation of wishing the commonweal upside-down? DISCUSSION DISCIPLINE: reactions to the questions on "money satire" and to the "optarim verius, quam sperarim" queries should have different subject lines, to enable Jeff Miller at UBC to archive our discussions as logically (and usefully) as possible. Thank you. **********************TIME TRIETH TRUTH******************** Luc Borot home 33-67 52 07 98 fax 33-67 14 24 65 work 33-67 14 24 49/33-67 14 24 48 Centre d'Etudes et de Recherches sur la Renaissance Anglaise Universite Paul Valery --- Montpellier (France) Date: Tue, 7 Nov 1995 10:35:26 -0800 (PST) From: owner-emls-utopia Subject: 3:4: 1st Seminar report Sender: owner-emls-utopia Precedence: bulk Status: RO X-Status: October 25, 1995 SEMINAR REPORT by Susan Reyniers I am a student in the DEA program at the Faculty of Letters of the University of Montpellier. The Diplome d'Etudes Approfondies is done after the masters degree and leads into a research thesis. This report was written following our first seminar with Pr. Borot. We are concerned here with Thomas More's *Utopia* and, in particular, the way in which form influences the message of the political ideas. We will be comparing with James Harrington's writing like *The Commonwealth of Oceana*, Richard Overton's "Arraignment of Mr Persecution, a satire.* Utopian philosophy can be described in a formal treatise which can explain, theorize, and present the rules of an ideal commonwealth. However, More chose to use a fiction, a tale, to present his utopia, his ideal society. Some definitions More was the first to use the word "utopia." topos = place eu = pleasant u = no A utopia is thus a pleasant place that exists nowhere. dystopia = a system that does not work well cacotopia = a state of complete chaos Some Background More appears at the time of maturation of humanist culture. He began writing *Utopia* around 1514 and was influenced by Greek literature, for example the intricate structure of More's book sometimes recalls that of Plato's Dialogues. More was one of the great statesmen of his time. He was advisor to Henry the VIII but defended the Roman Catholic church against Henry VIII. Utopia is dedicated to Erasmus of Rotterdam, the humanist, with whom More was in constant correspondence. More died in 1535. Characters' names More is hidden in his own book. He appears as writer and as main narrator, (whom we will refer to as Morus). The names he chooses for characters and places create an ironic distance through their non sense. Hythloday is the character who describes what he has seen in his trip to the islands. His name indicates one who is talking nonsense. Ademus is the ruler of Utopia; his name indicates a, none, demus, people, thus the ruler of no people. The river is named Anhydrus, the river without water. The book follows a common scheme for fictional utopian writing, that is the first part describes a dystopia - it identifies elements of society that do not function satisfactorily, in Europe in general and particularly in England. The second part describes the utopia, setting up a system to remedy these evils. In Book I, More is on a diplomatic mission to the Low Countries. Leaving church one morning he meets a friend, Peter Giles, who is with a traveler, Raphael Hythloday. He looks like a sailor, but he is a scholar and had traveled with Vespucci. He stayed behind in America for some time, and it was while sailing back home that he came across the Utopians. The geographical location of Utopia is left vague. But the fact that it is an island is significant both in the similarity with England, and the fact that isolated insular conditions allow the development of systems without corruption from external influences. This raises the question of the totalitarian aspect of utopias. In Book I we have an example of the elaborate and subtle narrrative scheme used by More and reminiscent of Plato's Dialogues in the discussion about one of the main scandals of British society of the times. It concerns the enclosures of common agricultural land and the development of sheep-grazing, a source of growing unemployment and vagrancy among the lower class. The discussion between the Lawyer, Hythloday and and Cardinal Morton concerns the way thieves are punished in England, that is, by hanging. The lawyer agrees with hanging as being the most economical means of stopping thievery. Hythloday objects that the number of thieves has been increasing. The intricate narrative structure, a dialogue within a dialogue within a narrative, creates a distancing effect and includes the following elements: More is writing a book told by his persona, Morus, who is participating in a conversation with Hythloday and Giles. In a fictional work, a fictional character, Hythloday, tells More and Peter Giles, real people, the truth about the state of England in reality. Hythloday becomes a second-hand narrator as he in turn is recounting a conversation that he had had in a different time and place, (15 years earlier in England) with Cardinal Morton and his guests including the lawyer. Hythloday is now telling the content of that conversation to Morus and Giles. More's opinions are disseminated through Hythloday and Cardinal Morton while the lawyer expresses an opposing point of view. Morus does not necessarily have the same position as More. Book II is more straightforward being mostly the description to Morus of what Hythloday learned in Utopia. The main social and economic problems More was trying to solve in his utopia were putting and end to vagrancy, suppressing inequality, and making everyone, including the nobility, work. **********************TIME TRIETH TRUTH******************** Luc Borot home 33-67 52 07 98 fax 33-67 14 24 65 work 33-67 14 24 49/33-67 14 24 48 Centre d'Etudes et de Recherches sur la Renaissance Anglaise Universite Paul Valery --- Montpellier (France) Date: Sun, 12 Nov 1995 04:17:30 -0800 (PST) Subject: 4:1: Re 3:5: "optarim verius, quam sperarim" From: Luc.Borot Sender: owner-emls-utopia Precedence: bulk Dan Lochman answered: >... yes, the issue of H's credibility >is important -- crucial -- to one's reading of *Utopia*.. > >Yes, utopists like More hold a pessimistic view >of mankind, requiring the exercise of force to achieve a state of social >harmony >and equity (at least as far as More's *Utopia* goes, I feel more comfortable >using a word closer to the *equitas* More normally uses than "equality" >with all >its baggage from the modern democratic state) Quite so: even in Harrington's "equal commonwealth", equality is not to be taken in the modern sense. In More, it seems that differences of merit create social differences that are not against equity because they derive from nature and work... or simply from age. Utopia remains a deferential society (cf the meal scenes) indeed. >, but, no, More objectifies his >utopian vision by placing it in the mouth of a speaker whose name, as well as >the other excellent points you refer to, bespeaks uncertain reliability despite >assertions by Giles and Morus of his intergity, honesty, and truth. Indeed, >the work involves a certain falling away from a conviction of reliability: >after Giles's introduction we are prepared for one whose sailing is like that >of Ulysses or "rather of Plato": prompted to consider one whose experiences at >once recapitulate the heroism of the *Odyssey* and, in an altogether different >sort of "ship," excursions in philsophy, one is left in the same odd, >half-conceived state that one discovers when examining the evidences for and >aginst his credibility. Yet, even with this comparison with the *Odyssey*, you add to the suspicions against H's reliability: Ulysses is a prince of lies; he is 'Nobody' to the cyclop; he could even appear as the founder of contradictory naming in mythological travelogues. Here again, 'a beau mentir qui vient de loin'. >One of the great strengths -- and one of the >weaknesses -- of *Utopia*, in my view, is its refusal to lift the veil >sufficiently to allow us to comprehend Morus's -- and the implied intended -- >reading. I personally tend to regard it as a strength: if the matter could be solved, we wouldn't ponder over the work's depth. I may be overstating More's 'authorial intention' as I say so, but the 'framing' texts invite this reflection. >I find it significant that the second letter to Giles, appended to >the 1517 edition only, was printed only once: its deliberate and obviously >ironic questioning of the book's facticity, and its pointing to the sweetening >effects of fiction as the best means of presenting "truth" (this latter made >distinct from being "correct" in the first letter to Giles) tips the balance of >H's credibility too blatantly to the fictional and hence the deliberately >provocative. This seems to draw us closer to Plato than JF Valee would have us a couple of weeks ago: Socrates practices provocation to his dying words, and this provocation within the dialogues implies resorting to fictions. With Socrates, it doesn't 'sweeten' the truth: it makes it possible to reach... for whoever will dare attempt the dialogical philosophical journey. > Once one admits that the created ideal state is only a fiction, >it loses its hold on one, in much the same way that it did for Plato in the >*Republic*, when his ideal city turns out to be a means for locating justice >not so much in the macro-structure of the state but the microstructure of the >soul. Yet, do we have the equivalent in More? is it the soul of the reader? in Plato, it would be the discovery of the concept of soul, of its fate. For More, educating the reader is crucial, but the political message remains dominant. >I find in *Utopia* a continuously expressed yearning whose seeming >naivete is constantly cut short, as in the wonderfully enigmatic closing words >you cite. What I find most interesting is neither that More is here being >merely >diffident nor seeking some political insulation from provocative assertions >about government but that he maintains an absolute point of uncertainty in >such a way that it infects the audience as much as it affects Morus. I agree that he is not trying to protect himself, yet, I fail to see what you mean about that 'infection' of the audience: do you mean they (we?) are (supposed to be?) affected by More's yearning? Yearning for what? Thank you indeed for relaunching discussion so brilliantly! Yours, Luc Borot **********************TIME TRIETH TRUTH********************* Luc Borot home 33-67 52 07 98 fax 33-67 14 24 65 work 33-67 14 24 49/33-67 14 24 48 Centre d'Etudes et de Recherches sur la Renaissance Anglaise Universite Paul Valery --- Montpellier (France) Date: Mon, 13 Nov 1995 03:09:47 -0800 (PST) Subject: 4:2 (Re: 3:5-4:1): More's Persuasion From: Carole Hamilton Sender: owner-emls-utopia Precedence: bulk > Dan Lochman said: > > >I find in *Utopia* a continuously expressed yearning whose seeming > > >naivete is constantly cut short, as in the wonderfully enigmatic >closing words > > >you cite. What I find most interesting is neither that More is here being > > >merely > > >diffident nor seeking some political insulation from provocative assertions > > >about government but that he maintains an absolute point of uncertainty in > > >such a way that it infects the audience as much as it affects Morus. > and Luc Borot replied: > > I agree that he is not trying to protect himself, yet, I fail to > > see what you mean about that 'infection' of the audience: do you mean they > > (we?) are (supposed to be?) affected by More's yearning? Yearning for what? I agree with Dan's point about "infecting" the reader, although I had not thought in terms of infection so much as in setting the reader up to perform a mental shift that results from Morus *not* championing the idea of building a Utopia in England. Yes, yearning is exactly what More wants to put into the mind of the reader. By creating a vacuum so to speak of his own yearning, he makes it "necessary" for the reader to provide the yearning. By putting off thinking about it (read, writing about it for us to read) to"some other time" he puts the reader into the position of wanting to get on with it. Had he immediately began his own sermon on the need to change the reader would be inclined to think of objections. This way, the reader becomes the advocate of the new way of thinking. More has made it unnecessary for the reader to think about objections, at least not yet, and that opens the possibility of the reader deciding to support the idea. This is very consistent with the idea of a "commonwealth that truly describes that name" where "all men zealously pursue the good of the public." The reader senses her/his own altruism in feeling attracted to utopian ideals and this state of mind makes thinking about objections to the new idea nearly impossible. The reader becomes not a critic but a champion of utopia. In addition, the Utopians commit to slavery anyone who used more force than that of persuasion to convince others of the merits of another religion. The discussion of a new philosophy of societal structure would be an analogous case, so More is simply following a precept of Utopian thought, in fact, taking modesty to an extreme for the purposes I just mentioned, in refusing to add his voice in exhortation of the utopian society. More not only presents a new kind of society but a new way of discoursing upon societal issues. Carole Hamilton clh6w@virginia.edu **********************TIME TRIETH TRUTH********************* Luc Borot home 33-67 52 07 98 fax 33-67 14 24 65 work 33-67 14 24 49/33-67 14 24 48 Centre d'Etudes et de Recherches sur la Renaissance Anglaise Universite Paul Valery --- Montpellier (France) Date: Mon, 13 Nov 1995 04:12:34 -0800 (PST) Subject: 4:3 (Re: 3:4: 1st Seminar report: Cardinal Morton) From: Ray Siemens Sender: owner-emls-utopia Precedence: bulk [This seems to have bounced back to its author, who had sent it a few days ago (Friday Nov. 10); as a matter of prudence, send your messages to the list AND to my address for safety's sake. Luc] Hello, This is my first posting to the group, and comes as a tangential response to the first seminar post of some days ago. (As a further tangent, let me say that my choice of pleasure reading these days is R Marius' biography, and I have very much enjoyed working through the materials R Lakowski has depositied on the EMLS server). Thinking of our approach to the Utopia, I wonder if it wouldn't be out of order to talk a bit about Cardinal Morton's role not only as a character in the Utopia but as a very real influence on More himself. Certainly he was an influence and, perhaps, as much of More comes through in the character of Morton as Morton himself, who commissioned such dramas as Fulgens and Lucres (ca. 1496) -- a debate on the nature of true nobility, in which the character who represents nobility by virtuous action emerges as victor -- and was a patron and politician in his own right; btw, I think it is R Marius who mentions (as well as others) that More himself may have acted a part in Fulgens and Lucres. So, I hope to post an open question to our group: What do the ways -- textual and extra-textual -- by which Morton is linked to the author and the text tell us about his influence both on the 'idea' of the Utopia and its contents, especially that relating to our political discussion? Looking forward to further discussion, Ray Siemens **********************TIME TRIETH TRUTH********************* Luc Borot home 33-67 52 07 98 fax 33-67 14 24 65 work 33-67 14 24 49/33-67 14 24 48 Centre d'Etudes et de Recherches sur la Renaissance Anglaise Universite Paul Valery --- Montpellier (France) Date: Mon, 13 Nov 1995 10:01:06 -0800 (PST) From: owner-emls-utopia Subject: 4:4: mail bounces... Sender: owner-emls-utopia Precedence: bulk Dear list members, We have just spotted a mail distribution problem, alluded to in posting 4:3. If any of you ever sent to the list a message that was not distributed, please notify Jeff Miller and myself. Sorry: we're still finding our way around (this especially applies to myself, I'm afraid); please post, discuss, question, criticise: this is what the list is for! Yours, Luc Borot **********************TIME TRIETH TRUTH********************* Luc Borot home 33-67 52 07 98 fax 33-67 14 24 65 work 33-67 14 24 49/33-67 14 24 48 Centre d'Etudes et de Recherches sur la Renaissance Anglaise Universite Paul Valery --- Montpellier (France) Date: Mon, 13 Nov 1995 11:50:01 -0800 (PST) Subject: 4:5: Utopia final sentence From: Robert Schultz Sender: owner-emls-utopia Precedence: bulk On the matter of the final sentence: much that has already been said supports the conclusion that More, the author, could only have ended Utopia with an equivocal and enigmatic last sentence in order to preserve the complexities of the book's meditations. The author, himself, is something of a Ulysses figure, for whom the Homeric epithets of Odysseus--"the great tactician," or, in some translations, "the many-minded"--are quite apt. More is of many minds with regard to some of the knottiest issues Utopia treats. The "heroism" involved here is that of braving indecision for the sake of a deep and agonizing enquiry. An outstanding example of such enquiry is the debate in Book I between Hythloday and Morus on the question of whether a philosopher (like Hythloday) should enter into public service by advising a king. Both Hythloday and Morus are given extremely strong positions, with neither winning the debate outright. High-minded and unambitious, Hythloday argues that a philospher can do a king no good and will harm himself by speaking from principle among so many interested only in power-seeking. He sounds like the Socrates of The Apology when he argues that a man intent always on truth and justice will be scorned (at best!) if he attempts to enter the public life in a realm that does not share his values. Morus counters with his famous speech about a philosophy "of a more civil kind, which knows the stage it should act on." Given this civil philosphy, the philosopher can serve, striving "obliquely" to make "as little evil as possible" those things he cannot turn entirely to good. Hythloday answers back, strongly, that truth is not subject to the kinds of compromises envisioned by the oblique course: "Iwhether it is appropriate for a philosopher to lie, I do not know. It certainly is not for me." The power of this debate, which is wrapped around the discussion of English problems at the home of Cardinal Morton, is that each position is equally compelling. The purity of the philospher's idealism encounters an ardent service ethic. We sense that we are witnessing two halves of More arguing a question upon which he is genuinely undecided. (The poignance of the debate lies in the decision that he eventually made and its ultimate outcome. Given what we know of More's fate in the service of Henry VIII, The Apology again rushes irresistibly to mind.) And so we see how More can sometimes deploy himself in his characters to debate questions upon which he is genuinely undecided. This touches on the "reliability" of the various speakers. While we are clearly in general sympathy with Hythloday, Morton, and Morus, the book's complex structure keeps us always subtly destabilized. This strikes me not as evasiveness, but as the sign of a live mind thinking--a mind thinking not in preparation for staking out an unalterable position, but as preparation for making decisions over time on the shifting stages of a very real world. Yours, Robert Schultz **********************TIME TRIETH TRUTH********************* Luc Borot home 33-67 52 07 98 fax 33-67 14 24 65 work 33-67 14 24 49/33-67 14 24 48 Centre d'Etudes et de Recherches sur la Renaissance Anglaise Universite Paul Valery --- Montpellier (France) Received: (from root@localhost) by unixg.ubc.ca (8.7.1/8.7.1) id XAA23976 for emls-utopia-outgoing; Mon, 13 Nov 1995 23:59:12 -0800 (PST) Date: Mon, 13 Nov 1995 23:59:12 -0800 (PST) From: owner-emls-utopia Message-Id: <199511140759.XAA23976@unixg.ubc.ca> Subject: 4:6: link to OTA texts Sender: owner-emls-utopia Precedence: bulk Jeff Miller informs me that he has set up a link to the OTA texts of Utopia on the same page as the link to the list's archive, i.e: http://www.arts.ubc.ca/english/iemls/vsem/borot.html This may help some of you to retrieve the Latin and English texts. Yours, Luc Borot **********************TIME TRIETH TRUTH********************* Luc Borot home 33-67 52 07 98 fax 33-67 14 24 65 work 33-67 14 24 49/33-67 14 24 48 Centre d'Etudes et de Recherches sur la Renaissance Anglaise Universite Paul Valery --- Montpellier (France) Date: Wed, 15 Nov 1995 00:29:09 -0800 (PST) Subject: 4:7: pre-seminar post 3 From: Luc Borot Sender: owner-emls-utopia Precedence: bulk This afternoon, 15 November 1995, the Montpellier seminar will study the structures of the utopian state. No great originality this time, no special meditation for this morning's zazen; the issues raised during the seminar will certainly be more interesting than what I can say now. Since next session will be on reason of state, please reread your Machiavelli and Botero, but PLEASE! keep the list posted with your Morean meditations. Thank you, Luc Borot **********************TIME TRIETH TRUTH********************* Luc Borot home 33-67 52 07 98 fax 33-67 14 24 65 work 33-67 14 24 49/33-67 14 24 48 Centre d'Etudes et de Recherches sur la Renaissance Anglaise Universite Paul Valery --- Montpellier (France) Date: Wed, 15 Nov 1995 04:39:08 -0800 (PST) Subject: 4:8: summary of seminar 2 From: Laurence Pons Sender: owner-emls-utopia Precedence: bulk Date: Wed, 15 Nov 1995 13:00 The problems raised in the seminar were the links between the literary form and ideology in Thomas More's *Utopia*. First of all is *Utopia* a satire? And what is satire? This literary form aimed at a social or political system, a person, a general moral behaviour (such as Moliere's character Arpagon) and this target is criticized through comic, ridicule, or irony. Satire is always a complicated form of creation.In Utopia it is pervaded with equivocity and ambiguity. We do not know if Morus, the persona, believes in the existence of Utopia or not. He hardly accepts all utopian values. For instance, the absence of money. Can a society work without it? The text is sometimes contradictory. Thomas More criticizes European values as well: "Sheep devour men" is a summary of his vision of the abberations of how the English economy works - or rather doesn't work- at the time. This is the dystopia inside the utopia. It is only when you introduce a set of outsiders who sahre common values inside the context of the 'ideal'society that one can start an actual criticism, for instance Montesquieu's *Les Lettres Persannes* (1726). In Utopia Hythlodeus represents the outsider. Several points of view are presented. The presence of the Anemolians in Utopia represents another point of view. Instead of travelling it is another people coming to into Utopia. The relations Utopians have with other peoples lies mainly in commerce. They need iron whereas they have gold and silver in abundance. But iron being much more used than these two metals it becomes much more valuable for the Utopians. All this suggests the absurdity in which the Utopians findthemselves.They don't use gold and silver as a currency, but they use bartering. Reason of State is one of the values in Utopia." The end justifies the means". It gives the right to the ruler to trangress the rules in a situation of exception and it is also the knowledge of the situation of the country. "The island is like one family" is a key phrase; this is the way they want to promote themselves. *Utopia* is a satire of covetousness. How do you educate people not to desire something? not to provoke envy? If people already own this thing they will come to value material things or they may be detached - like gems used by Utopian children as toys. As to the parable of the Animolian ambassador; is it satire formally speaking? Using a classical reference children speak the Thruth.When they come to Utopia Animolian ambassadors want all their ornaments, which to the Utopians are the attributes of slaves.It si the reversal of values.They went as far as purifying people's values, healing the nature of covetousness. Is More optimistic or pessimistic in regards to human nature? Is he convinced of the fallen nature of man? More was tempted to become a Carthusian monk, a very austere oder. They only wore a simple uniform suit, similar to what the Utopians wear. The dystopia inside the utopia is aimed at mankind in general. Shock and surprise are typical of satire , it sets a paradox. Satire shares this aspect with comedy. Shocking in stead of reforming.The negative nature of men is present is Thomas more's Utopia but it is not only pessimistic. It is also about the capacity of men to alter their evil dimension. Through education they are perfectible, which a key concept for Enlightenment. Rousseau and Voltaire have carried this idea of a possible restoration of men's good nature. Man is able to understand signs and signals that have a meaning yet there is a possibility for misunderstandings. ************************TIME TRIETH TRUTH************************ *e-mail: lb@alor.univ-montp3.fr - lb@bred.univ-montp3.fr *Prof. Luc Borot - Centre d'Etudes et de Recherches *sur la Renaissance Anglaise *Universite Paul-Valery, Montpellier (France) *phone: 33-67142448 - 33-67142449 - fax 33-67142465