Sir Thomas More And Utopia

1923 Words4 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: Analysis Of The Cinderella

Sir Thomas More and Utopia

One of my favorite movies of all time is Ever After: A Cinderella Story. It is a 1998 film adaption of the fairy tale Cinderella and stars Drew Barrymore as the lead female character named Danielle de Barbarac. Danielle’s mother dies very early in her life and as a result Danielle and her father are very close. Her father remarries a baroness with two daughters. Shortly after, her father dies of a heart attack. Danielle now has very few possessions to call her own: a beautiful gown and slippers that had belonged to her mother, the loyalty of the manor's three remaining servants, and her father's copy of Utopia, by Thomas More.

The story ends happily ever after, with Danielle marrying the handsome prince and ridding of her terrible step-mother and step-sisters. The one thing I wanted to know more about in the movie was the book Danielle’s father gave her. Why was Utopia so inspiring to her? Who was the man who wrote this book? Was the book fiction or fact? After reading my syllabus for History 101, I knew right away that I’d like to find out more about Thomas More and Utopia.

Thomas More was more than just an author. He was also a lawyer and statesman. Throughout his lifetime, More earned a reputation as a leading humanist scholar and occupied many public offices, including that of Lord Chancellor from 1529 to 1532. He was married twice and had five children, including one adoptive child. More was a devoted father and husband and cared deeply for his family. His writings and novels sometimes contrasted with what people thought were his personal religious beliefs.

In October 1529, King Henry VIII appointed More to Lord Chancellor after Cardinal Wolsey failed to convince Pope Clement VII to give the King an annulment of his marriage to Queen Catherine of Aragon. Henry began to convince himself that the Pope was only the Bishop of Rome and therefore had no authority of the Christian Church as a whole. More was fully devoted to Henry until then, and fully cooperated with the King’s new policy.

More absolutely hated heresy. He thought it was a threat to peace and unity of both society and the church. According to an article from Masters of World Literature, he did all he could to prevent the spread of Lutheranism, including “burning at least six people at the stake and imprisoning as many as forty others” (par.

Show More
Related

  • Perfection in Ursula LeGuin's The Lathe of Heaven

    1932 Words  | 4 Pages

    ...nce our perceptions on reality and the concept of a utopian society. The connection between our own society and elements of the novel enable readers to recognize that although a literal utopian society is not possible, the closest we can come to perfection is to find a balance between what is and what we can imagine.

    Read More

  • Walden Two: A Utopian Written By B. F. Skinner

    1095 Words  | 3 Pages

    The book opens up at the office of a professor named Burris. A former student of his, Rogers, and his friend, Steve, arrive at his office. They are disturbed by the current state of life in America and have come to Burris to ask him about the utopia that he had once discussed in class. Rodgers got his inspiration from an article written by a man named Frazier. It turns out Frazier, a friend of Burris’s from graduate school, is also where Burris got his ideas. Burris sends

    Read More

  • Private and Corporate Vocations in Utopia by Thomas More

    672 Words  | 2 Pages

    Thomas More hates war, as do most people. But you must have an army constantly training to avoid war. Having a well-trained army will scare enemies and keep people from attacking them. This is yet another corporate vocation. Everyone in the army has a private vocation to protect the city and the people within so this creates another corporate vocation. The army protects the farmers and religious and the farmers provide food for the soldiers and the religious pray for the army as well as the farmers. So it all comes together into one large corporate vocation. Regarding the book itself, it ends with worship because it is the way to live.

    Read More

  • King Henry VIII: The Musical Court

    1284 Words  | 3 Pages

    King Henry VIII was born in 1491, and became king in 1509, until his death in 1547. He is probably most known for his six marriages, which he had two of his former wives beheaded. As king, Henry VIII was responsible for separating England from the Roman Catholic Church creating the newly formed Church of England. As a result of this reformation, King Henry VIII discontinued all monasteries serving Rome in England to get rid of all Catholic influences which ultimately led to a new form of church music being written for the Anglican Church. King Henry VIII was a unique king in the sense that he was a strong advocate for the arts especially music. He was a composer, musician, and had a very large court fill with some of the best musicians in Europe. His compositions were some of the most popular songs in England during the Renaissance. He was originally intended to play a major leadership role in the church, but due to the death of his elder brother Arthur he became king. The education and training he received for the church naturally played an enormous role in the daily life in his court. The fact that he was so involved with music really shaped his ideology on what should be the role for the arts in his monarch and how his court should function on a daily basis.

    Read More

  • Comparing More's Utopia and Our Modern Dystopia

    419 Words  | 1 Pages

    Thomas More was born in London in 1478. He studied at Oxford where he took a profound love of classical literature. In Utopia, More shows his own skills in humanism. In this story, modeled after Plato's Republic, More examines his culture against a hypothetical culture he invents. His Utopia varies greatly from both his society and our society today. Four ways Utopia differs from our society are social system, attitude towards jewelry, marriage customs, and religion.

    Read More

  • Martin Luther

    890 Words  | 2 Pages

    Luther exemplifies some of the political aspects present in life during the 16th century. Now, the first of these is that the Catholic Church held a large amount of the political power at that time. The church had influence over almost everything. To the people of this time, faith was almost everything to them, and if they were under the threat of excommunication, they were almost certain to give in to what the church wanted. This is apparent because excomm...

    Read More

  • The Perfect Society In 1516 Thomas More's Utopia

    1242 Words  | 3 Pages

    Conditionally being free within society from oppressive limitations, or the right to pursue after whatever makes one subjectively happy is human instinct. Equality, Liberty, and alongside the pursuit of happiness goes among with visualizing a place in which the economy, social conditions, and government, are perfect is the interpretation of an immaculate culture. As ideas are formed absorbing conciseness from one person to another, so did the start of forming a society. Slowly human culture began arriving to decisions establishing in one place developing their own food, fabricating a system of letters, and constructing permanent homes creating the first civilizations. The multitude of people living with each other in a more or less ordered

    Read More

  • Thomas More’s Utopia and Aldus Huxley’s Brave New World

    2373 Words  | 5 Pages

    Thomas More’s Utopia and Aldus Huxley’s Brave New World , are novels about societies that differ from our own. Though the two authors have chosen different approaches to create an alternate society, both books have similarities which represent the visions of men who were moved to great indignation by the societies in which they lived. Both novels have transcended contemporary problems in society , they both have a structured, work based civilization and both have separated themselves from the ways of past society. It is important when reading these novels to focus on the differences as well as the similarities. The two novels differ in their views of love, religion, and the way to eliminate social classes. These differences seem to suggest that if we do not come closer to More’s goal in Utopia, we will end up in a society much like that of Huxley’s Brave New World.

    Read More

  • A Two Tale Comparison

    1449 Words  | 3 Pages

    of the Cinderella story are psychologically harmful to women.” (p648). The fact that Cinderella is a limited character may give the girl an impression that she should be happy with what she has and not have any or aspirations in her life. That is, until her Prince comes to rescue her. Since these comments were made, the Cinderella story has been modified and changed. In order to see how gender roles have changed in fairy tales from the old to the new, let’s compare the classic version of Cinderella by Charles Perrault to a recent version which is a movie that was released in 1998 called “Ever After”which was directed by Andy Tennant.

    Read More

  • Utopia Essay

    3248 Words  | 7 Pages

    The concept of Utopia has been around for many years, tracing back to ancient Greece. The word for Utopia came from the Greek words ou and topos, meaning no place. Even from the beginning, the concept of Utopia was not seemed to be possible.

    Read More

  • King Henry VIII: The Golden King

    1319 Words  | 3 Pages

    ...s of books, plays, poems, and pamphlets. While King Henry VIII may not have had the best characteristics or not always completely thought through his actions, there was no doubt that he was a leader all his life.

    Read More

  • Utopia by Thomas Moore: Analysis

    1762 Words  | 4 Pages

    Utopia itself is divided into two different books, the first half of the book talks about ‘the obligations of a man of experience and integrity to play an active role in the service of a country and mankind,’ Moore puts himself into his narrative meeting a traveler called Raphael Hythloday. Hythloday is described as wise and well-travelled however, this fictional character has cruised with ‘the famed explored Amergio Vespucci.’ Vespucci was seen as a fraud to Moore and other philosophers, therefore its unclear whether Raphael Hythloday is truly reliable or not. The second half of the of the book goes into Hythloday’s tr...

    Read More

  • Comparing Plato's Republic and Thomas More's Utopia

    2965 Words  | 6 Pages

    The trite cliche that no man is an island applies equally well to political philosophies. Thomas More's Utopia was written both as a product of his time, and also as a product of a previous time--that of Greek civilization, especially around 380BC, when Plato's Republic was written. The similarities between the two books are not limited to them both being a dialogue. Both contain a description of the perfect state, although they do this for different reasons and they arrive at different types of perfection.

    Read More

  • The Utopian Impulse

    1135 Words  | 3 Pages

    To explore the concepts of Utopian theory, both political and social, one must first engender a concrete definition of what Utopia means. Sir Thomas More, the original creator of the term Utopia, signifies it as “no place”. However, More’s clever play on words seems ultimately to suggest that ”no place” is just no place right now. That is to say that Utopia is “an ideal place that does not exist in reality” yet (Murfin and Ray 529).

    Read More

  • A Critical Analysis Of Sir Tomas More's Utopia

    1062 Words  | 3 Pages

    Because they are described in a detailed manner, Utopia book itself seems to be enough to be a blueprint for the future. However, Thomas More clearly stated that he just wishes Europeans to follow some good qualities of the Utopian society—“there are many things in the Utopian commonwealth that in our own societies I would wish rather than expect to see” (97)—because he himself knows that it is impossible for any country to be like Utopia. This is apparent, because Utopia is possible on the premise that if every factors comes perfectly to create this ideal society. Even the geography has to contribute to this premise as Hythloday explains the geography of Utopia as the place where stranger cannot enter without one of them (39). Moreover, from diligent and compassionate Utopians’ characteristics and their ways of life, they seem to be successful in reaching the fullest of every aspects of their life including physical, intellectual, social, spiritual, and emotional, when it is hardly possible to even have one person like that in real

    Read More

More about Sir Thomas More And Utopia

Open Document