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Reading Utopia in the Reformation of Punishment
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 20 January 2020
Abstract
Recent scholarship on the first English translation of Thomas More's “Utopia” has asked how its publication in the 1550s fits with the larger agenda of Protestant Reformers who promoted the book alongside their other civic projects. This article argues that the initiatives of greatest relevance were the new house of correction at Bridewell (est. 1553–57) and the infamous Vagrancy Act of 1547–49, which failed to introduce slavery as a punishment in English law. Evidence of user interactions with the 1550s editions, including indexing, annotation, commonplacing, and quotation, helps to analyze how the text's complicated ideas about penal labor were received and reemphasized by early English readers.
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- Copyright © Renaissance Society of America 2020
Footnotes
I would like to thank the Folger Institute, Cathy Curtis, and participants in the 2016 seminar “More's Utopia: Humanist Literature and Political Thought,” where this essay originated. For their input on earlier drafts I thank Leonard Barkan, Bradin Cormack, Jeff Dolven, Isaac Harrison Louth, Ivan Lupić, Nigel Smith, audiences at Princeton's Center for the Study of Religion and Renaissance Workshop, and RQ’s anonymous referees.