Utopia (Classics)

by Thomas More (Author), Paul Turner (Author)

• Used

  Paperback
  1969

  $3.42

  Sir Thomas More's entertaining description of Utopia, an island supporting a perfectly organized and happy people, was a best-seller when it first appeared in Latin in 1516. This work of a Catholic martyr has later been seen as the source of Ana-baptism, Mormonism, and even communism. Utopia revolutionized Plato's classical blueprint of the perfect republic, mainly by its realism. Locating his island in the (then) New World, More endowed it with a language and poetry, and detailed the length of the working day and even the divorce laws. Such precision gives a disturbing and exciting impact to Utopia, which still remains a book of the future.

• Used

  Paperback
  1994

  $3.27

  Published in Latin in 1516, Utopia is one of the most influential books in the Western philosophical and literary tradition and an achievement of Renaissance humanism. This edition combines More's Latin text with an English translation, a commentary, a textual guide and an introduction.

• New

  Paperback
  1997

  $7.43

  With an Introduction by Mishtooni Bose. More's Utopia is a complex, innovative and penetrating contribution to political thought, culminating in the famous 'description' of the Utopians, who live according to the principles of natural law, but are receptive to Christian teachings, who hold all possessions in common, and view gold as worthless. Drawing on the ideas of Plato, St Augustine and Aristotle, Utopia was to prove seminal in its turn, giving rise to the genres of utopian and dystopian prose fiction whose practitioners include Sir Francis Bacon, H.G. Wells, Aldous Huxley and George Orwell. At once a critique of the social consequences of greed and a meditation on the personal cost of entering public service, Utopia dramatises the difficulty of balancing the competing claims of idealism and pragmatism, and continues to invite its readers to become participants in a compelling debate concerning the best state of a commonwealth.