Sir Thomas More & Travel Literature Notes

THOMAS MORE - TRAVEL AND UTOPIA 'The author of Utopia is a different being from the opponent of Tyndale, and different again from More the historian or the Christian soul beset with fears in The Dialogue of Comfort' (JOHN WARRINGTON). MORE + DIVERSITY Compare the aims of any two utopias of the period. MORE + UTOPIAN WRITING 'A new world of literature had been opened up by humanists, a new world of religion in vernacular translations of the Bible, a new world of discovery, trade and colonization by voyagers.' RESPONSE TO NEW WORLD "O my America, my new found land (Donne) - NEW WORLD + EXPLORATION Consider the importance of the travelogue and /or imaginary journey in this period TRAVEL WRITING "Renaissance travel writing aimed more at clearing the ground for conquest and investment than at understanding different cultures". COLONIALISM + CONQUEST 'The details of Utopia raise problems but not necessarily solutions' PROBLEMS IN UTOPIA "The central concern of More's writing is the moral well--being of Henrician England" UTOPIA + ENGLAND "A saint to some, a persecutor to others " - MORE + RELIGIOUS DIFFERENCE Write on More's sense of the dramatic MORE + DRAMATIC If I should propose to any king wholesome decrees, doing my endeavour to pluck out of his mind the pernicious original causes of vice and naughtiness, think you not that I should forthwith either be driven away or else made a laughing--stock?' (MORE) KINGS COUNSIL - MORE'S POLITICS 'What is the purpose of writing about other lands or recounting one's experience of foreign travel?' (ANDREW HADFIELD) PURPOSE OF TRAVEL WRITING "In a rising, mercantile, politically conscious, comparatively affluent society, there was a need for new vision of the good life, new paradises, new golden worlds, even new hell" UTOPIAN VISIONS "Religiously and politically he was consistent" C.W Lewis. Do some of More's other works help us to interpret Utopia? MORE'S CONSISTENCE / OTHER WORKS "The association between travel and misfortune has the character of a literary convention. The traveler, like the lover, is a generic figure of woe" (Peter Womack) CONVENTIONS OF TRAVEL LIT MAJOR THEMES TRAVEL WRITING / GENRE / CONVENTIONS NEW WORLDS THE NEED / PURPOSE OF UTOPIAN WRITING MORE'S RELGIOUS / POLITICAL VIEWS MORE OTHER WORK IN RELATION TO UTOPIA MORE'S DRAMATIC WRITING MORE'S DIVERSITY 1. TRAVEL WRITING - Exploration, New World Characteristic of a utopia by Amy Boesky: = = = = = I define utopia as a 'speaking picture' of an ideal commonwealth it is a self-conscious and necessarily intertextual form In most cases the utopia is a dialogue based on the traveler's tale discovered by accident after a storm, shipwreck, or confusion at sea [ the visitor returns to his native country, taking back the valuable impression of the ideal commonwealth and making it known Amy Boesky, Founding Fictions: Utopias in Early Modern England (Athens,1996) 1606 Drayton's "To The Virginian Voyage: = Unequivocally optimistic in description of The New World = The harsh realities of life in Virginia in post Jamestown pamphlets from the Americans had not yet tainted views of NW = Refs to "golden age" - engages with tradition (Chapman part of it too) - American landscape in Ovidian terms derived from the depictions of Saturns Idylic reign in Metamorphosos 1596 Chapman's De Guiana Carmen Epidcum: = Thought to represent propagandistic attempt through poetry to gain support for WR caolonial enterprises in NW Lisa Hopkins "harnesses the full representational amoury of poetry and by its Latin Title and use of the epic form, deliberately presents itself as hymning the English colonial enterprise in the Americas, in much the same spirit as Virgil had chronicles Aeneas's forays in Africa and Italy: The Old World and the New in As You Like It.' EMLS 2002 Stephen Greenblatt: "Crisis of interpretation" caused by discovery of a new world - unknowable / indescribable - European writers attempting to write about the Americas were assisted in the task of describing the utterly new + inexpressible by turning to poetry Marvelous Possession - Wonder of the New world 1991 LATER ? after turbulence following initial Jamestown settlement, when English colonizers faced Indian invasions, disease, mutiny.... 1681 Marvel's Bermudas: = Writes of fruitfulness of New world = Tone like Chapman + D = celebratory + Utopian = Admiration of "eternal spring" reflects D's "Winters age / That long there doth not live = Abundance + fruitfulness which D expresses "Nature hath in store / Fowle, venison and fish = posits NW as distinctly recoverable paradise within present / future orientation + geographical dimensions = Makes it attainable, but unlike earlier Utopian vision, which similarly availed themselves of a spatial rather than temporal dimension (e.g UTOPIA, located specifically in Americas saturated in riches) = the emphasis in Marvell is not on gold, but on the golden age. = The Bermudas are not a lost paradise of the past, but an extant haven which can be journeyed to by ship. Written report - visible signs of discovery - foreign lands are translated for consumption by colonizing culture in its own language: 

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