Sir Thomas More's Utopia

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Sir Thomas More's Utopia
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Sir Thomas More's Utopia

• Thomas More   (1478 - 1535)
• Born  February 7, 1478London, EnglandDied
   July 6, 1535Tower Hill, London, England

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Sir Thomas More's Utopia

• 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.

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Sir Thomas More's Utopia

• 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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Utopia

• 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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Utopia

• 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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Utopia

• 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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Utopia

• 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.

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Sir Thomas More's Utopia
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References

• Thomas More. (2008, February 22). In Wikipedia,
  The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved 1416, February
  26, 2008, from http//en.wikipedia.org/