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Thomas More’s Utopia
Thomas More’s Utopia
Utopia by Thomas More scholarly analysis
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Sir Thomas More, venerated by Roman Catholics as Saint Thomas More, was an English lawyer, social philosopher, author, statesman and noted Renaissance humanist. He was also a councillor to Henry VIII, and Lord High Chancellor of England from October 1529 to 16 May 1532. More opposed the Protestant Reformation, in particular the theology of Martin Luther and William Tyndale. He also wrote Utopia, published in 1516, about the political system of an imaginary ideal island nation. More opposed the King's separation from the Catholic Church, refusing to acknowledge Henry as Supreme Head of the Church of England and the annulment of his marriage to Catherine of Aragon. After refusing to take the Oath of Supremacy, he was convicted of treason and …show more content…
Studying under Thomas Linacre and William Grocyn, he became proficient in both Latin and Greek. More left Oxford after only two years—at his father's insistence—to begin legal training in London at New Inn, one of the Inns of Chancery. In 1496, More became a student at Lincoln's Inn, one of the Inns of Court, where he remained until 1502, when he was called to the Bar. Between 1503 and 1504 More lived near the Carthusian monastery outside the walls of London and joined in the monks' spiritual exercises. Although he deeply admired their piety, More ultimately decided to remain a layman, standing for election to Parliament in 1504 and marrying the following …show more content…
More vigorously suppressed the travelling country ministers who used Tyndale's English translation of the New Testament. It contained controversial translations of certain words; for example, Tyndale used "senior" and "elder" rather than "priest" for the Greek "''", and some of the marginal glosses challenged Catholic doctrine. It was during this time that most of his literary polemics
...and, “I don’t believe this had to happen”(144). At least twice Sir Thomas More made poor choices and put himself into bad situations in the play, which ultimately took him closer and closer to his death.
After that, Wolsey asked More how he planned to give the king a male heir. More said that he would “pray for it daily” but Wolsey wanted to “secure a divorce” so that King Henry VIII could marry Anne Boleyn and most likely produce a male heir, which he felt would solve the issue immediately, since he was making the effort to do something, unlike More, who would rather pray for help.
When one reads the story, initially they would consider More as a wise and religious man, who wouldn’t even harm a fly. He was deeply respected for he was quite intelligent, in the aspect that he was a lawyer and knew the business of politics well. More was considered wise. He had his own ideas of things, and he seems to know what is best for everyone. However, it was his philosophies and his strong faith in the Church, the King, and in God that got him prosecuted.
According to Nicholas Mann, "Humanism is that concern with the legacy of antiquity, and in particular but not exclusively with its literary legacy... it involves above all the rediscovery and study of Greek and Roman texts, the restoration and interpretation of them, and the assimilation of the ideas and values they contain." The Studia Humanitatis (Studies of Humanity) is a Latin term used by Roman writers describing a cycle of studies in the humanities including, grammar, rhetoric, history, poetry, and moral philosophy. Francesco Petrarch, an Italian scholar and poet of the fifteenth century, is considered by many to be the father of humanism. Petrarch 's influential texts had circulated widely throughout Florence and made their way into the government. Thus, humanist learning began to shape political ideologies in Florence. By inspiring humanist philosophy, Petrarch helped pave the way for the start of the Renaissance.
During the Renaissance, people were dedicated to studying human works. They would observe from real life to gain inspiration, new ideas, and to try to recreate the world as they saw it in their art. New techniques such as scientific and atmospheric perspective were created, changing art forever. Artists would use their skills to create works for patrons, from the Church, various guilds, and other religious orders. During the High Renaissance, Julius II commissioned Raphael to decorate the Vatican Palace. The first of the rooms he decorated was The “Room of the Signature”, where he painted The School of Athens. Originally, this room housed Julius II’s personal library, but later on it would be the room where papal documents were signed. In 1508, Raphael began painting four frescoes that represented theology, philosophy, law, and the arts. As stated in Janson’s History of Art Volume II, This fresco “represents a summation of High Renaissance humanism, for it attempts to represent the unity of knowledge in one grand scheme.” Raphael’s The School of Athens is a prime example of humanistic art, as evidenced by the subject of the art itself, the classical elements in the piece, and it’s scientific and illusionistic rendering.
Martin Luther was a friar very devoted to the Church but after analyzing all these aspects he decided to do something about it. On October 31, 1517 he attached to the door of Wittenberg Castle a list of 95 theses or propositions on indulgences. These theses criticized papal policies and were objections about he church put on hold for discussion.
This clearly demonstrates the fact that More knew what he was on about and wasn’t going to go against his beliefs for the sake of living. More strongly believed in the church and the Head of the Church, the Pope. He sustained in doing what you feel right in your heart, not what people tell you. More knew that if he stayed alive, it would have been sufferable, living in jail for the rest of his life, no job and little sight of family. He did what he thought was right. “ I do no harm, I say none harm, I think none harm. And if this be not enough to keep a man alive, in good faith I long not to live”(pg. 97)
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.
During the renaissance, there was a renewed interest in the arts, and the traditional views of society came into question. People began to explore the power of the human mind. A term often used to describe the increasing interest in the powers of the human mind is humanism. Generally, humanism stresses the individual's creative, reasoning, and aesthetic powers. However, during the Renaissance, individual ideas about humanism differed.
Sir Thomas More was born in London to Agnes and John More a lawyer in 1477. Tomas after being a page in the Morton Household was sent to Oxford University and became a successful lawyer. After becoming an MP for the Under-Sheriff of London he started writing the book Utopia and finishing it 1516. After writing the book he was appointed as the privy councilor to King Henry VIII in 1518. He was latter executed in 1535 for refusing King Henry VIII to be the head of the church. Utopia is a fictional book about Mores talk with Raphael Nonsenso and his travels to Utopia.
The text Utopia was written by Sir Thomas Moore in 1516, just before the outbreak of the Reformation. More’s life flourished through the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, which were influential years in the Renaissance, a flowering of art and thought that began in Italy and flooded through Europe and England. Humanists often stressed the dignity of man and the power of reason while remaining deeply committed to Christianity. Their thought and writings helped to break the strict religious orthodoxy that had forced itself through the Middle Ages. Humanists often argued against feudalism as it promoted a society dominated by the rich and unfair on everyone else. Further, they saw feudal society as irrational.
After Robert Bolt selected this man, he began to write and realised many more things about Thomas More, which had drawn him to the 16th century character. One of the things that Bolt found out was More’s sense of self. He remarks on this on page 12 of the preface. “At any rate, Thomas More, as I wrote about him, became for me a man with an adamantine sense of his own self.” Robert Bolt went back to this era long past because of that trait but it was as he wrote about him that he discovered just how strong his sense of identity was.
He uses the characters to bring about points that went against common thought at the time. More does give some insight to his thoughts when he says, “When Raphael had finished his story, I was left thinking that not a few of the laws and customs he had described as existing among the Utopians were really absurd” (p. 106). More explains these things consisted of war, religion, and other smaller customs. More next says that “… my chief objection was to the basis of their whole system, that is, their communal living and moneyless economy” (p. 106). It is clear here that More was not completely for the Utopian society. He even goes as far as dismissing the communal practices which is the basis of the entire society in the first place. It makes sense since he was heavily involved in the Roman Catholic Church and an important figure. Much of Utopia goes completely against the norms that were set by 1516 in England. More also ends book II by stating, “Meantime, while I can hardly agree with everything he said… I freely confess that in the Utopian commonwealth there are very many features that in our own societies I would wish rather than expect to see” (p. 107). More is showing that even though he doesn’t agree with many of the aspects of Utopia, that it isn’t all bad. The only problem is that More poses the practices he likes with wishful thinking and not practicality. According to More,
To understand the relationship, the two books must be contextualized. An important part of contextualization is to understand the role of Plato in both the period of Humanism and, within that, in the life of Thomas More. On the one hand, More, like many of his counterparts of the period, "had enjoyed good humanist [education] and retained a powerful love of classical literature" (Rice 141). To further complicate matters, though, although he was a politician, he was also a devout Christian who "secretly wore a hairshirt until the day before he died" (Turner/More 14). More specifically, More was a devout Catholic who was executed because he refused to take an oath swearing loyalty to Henry VIII, after the split of the Church of England, over the pope. His religiosity makes some of the differences between the Republic and Utopia more understandable.
He taught justification by faith, the return of Christ, and mortality of the soul. Printed works Although best known for his translation of the Bible, Tyndale was also an active writer and translator. As well as his focus on the ways in which religion should be lived, he had a focus on political issues. Year Printed Name of Work Place of Publication Publisher 1525 The New Testament Translation (incomplete)