Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- List of abbreviations
- Richard Barrie Dobson: an appreciation
- 1 ‘If heaven be on this earth, it is in cloister or in school’: the monastic ideal in later medieval English literature
- 2 The ‘Chariot of Aminadab’ and the Yorkshire priory of Swine
- 3 Godliness and good learning: ideals and imagination in medieval university and college foundations
- 4 Hugh of Balsham, bishop of Ely 1256/7–1286
- 5 A cruel necessity? Christ's and St John's, two Cambridge refoundations
- 6 Coventry's ‘Lollard’ programme of 1492 and the making of Utopia
- 7 Thomas More's Utopia and medieval London
- 8 Social exclusivity or justice for all? Access to justice in fourteenth-century England
- 9 Idealising criminality: Robin Hood in the fifteenth century
- 10 Fat Christian and Old Peter: ideals and compromises among the medieval Waldensians
- 11 Imageless devotion: what kind of an ideal?
- 12 An English anchorite: the making, unmaking and remaking of Christine Carpenter
- 13 Victorian values in fifteenth-century England: the Ewelme almshouse statutes
- 14 Puritanism and the poor
- 15 Realising a utopian dream: the transformation of the clergy in the diocese of York, 1500–1630
- Bibliography of Barrie Dobson's published works
- Index
7 - Thomas More's Utopia and medieval London
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 July 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- List of abbreviations
- Richard Barrie Dobson: an appreciation
- 1 ‘If heaven be on this earth, it is in cloister or in school’: the monastic ideal in later medieval English literature
- 2 The ‘Chariot of Aminadab’ and the Yorkshire priory of Swine
- 3 Godliness and good learning: ideals and imagination in medieval university and college foundations
- 4 Hugh of Balsham, bishop of Ely 1256/7–1286
- 5 A cruel necessity? Christ's and St John's, two Cambridge refoundations
- 6 Coventry's ‘Lollard’ programme of 1492 and the making of Utopia
- 7 Thomas More's Utopia and medieval London
- 8 Social exclusivity or justice for all? Access to justice in fourteenth-century England
- 9 Idealising criminality: Robin Hood in the fifteenth century
- 10 Fat Christian and Old Peter: ideals and compromises among the medieval Waldensians
- 11 Imageless devotion: what kind of an ideal?
- 12 An English anchorite: the making, unmaking and remaking of Christine Carpenter
- 13 Victorian values in fifteenth-century England: the Ewelme almshouse statutes
- 14 Puritanism and the poor
- 15 Realising a utopian dream: the transformation of the clergy in the diocese of York, 1500–1630
- Bibliography of Barrie Dobson's published works
- Index
Summary
Reading Thomas More's Utopia I cannot help but be struck by the impression that this is not just a book written by a Londoner, and set against a London background, but that here is a book written by somebody who was steeped in traditions of writing and reading about London law, and the history, practices and problems of London's administration.
THE BEST STATE OF THE COMMONWEALTH, THE DISCOURSE OF THE EXTRAORDINARY CHARACTER, RAPHAEL HYTHLODAEUS, AS REPORTED BY THE RENOWNED FIGURE, THOMAS MORE, CITIZEN AND SHERIFF OF THE FAMOUS CITY OF LONDON, BRITAIN.
So Thomas More both began and ended his treatise on Utopia, or the best state of the commonwealth, by drawing attention to his status as citizen and sheriff of the city of London. This choice of signature is surely significant. More himself was under-sheriff, not sheriff, of the city of London from 1510–18, but the title in Utopia is given, not to himself, but to the character of the same name (in Latin, Morus) who is given the role of narrator in the text. Morus is deployed to report and debate the virtues of the Utopian way of life with Raphael Hythlodaeus, who claims to have found the island of Utopia while exploring the newly discovered Americas. The discoveries of Hythlodaeus provided More with a tabula rasa on which to construct a new vision of the ideal society.
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- Information
- Pragmatic UtopiasIdeals and Communities, 1200–1630, pp. 117 - 135Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2001
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