tō`pēə) [Gr.,=no place], title of a book by Sir Thomas More More, Sir Thomas (Saint Thomas More), 1478–1535, English statesman and author of Utopia, celebrated as a martyr in the Roman Catholic Church. He received a Latin education in the household of Cardinal Morton and at Oxford...... Click the link for more information. , published in Latin in 1516. The work pictures an ideal state where all is ordered for the best for humanity as a whole and where the evils of society, such as poverty and misery, have been eliminated. The popularity of the book has given the generic name Utopia to all concepts of ideal states. The description of a utopia enables an author not only to set down criticisms of evils in the contemporary social scene but also to outline vast and revolutionary reforms without the necessity of describing how they will be effected. Thus, the influence of utopian writings has generally been inspirational rather than practical.
The Utopian Ideal over Time
The name utopia is applied retroactively to various ideal states described before More's work, most notably to that of the Republic of Plato. St. Augustine's City of God in the 5th cent. enunciated the theocratic ideal that dominated visionary thinking in the Middle Ages. With the Renaissance the ideal of a utopia became more worldly, but the religious element in utopian thinking is often present thereafter, such as in the politico-religious ideals of 17th-century English social philosophers and political experimenters. Among the famous pre-19th-century utopian writings are François Rabelais's description of the Abbey of Thélème in Gargantua (1532), The City of the Sun (1623) by Tommaso Campanella Campanella, Tommaso (tōm–mä`zō kämpänĕl`lä)
..... Click the link for more information. , The New Atlantis (1627) of Francis Bacon Bacon, Francis, 1561–1626, English philosopher, essayist, and statesman, b. London, educated at Trinity College, Cambridge, and at Gray's Inn. He was the son of Sir Nicholas Bacon, lord keeper to Queen Elizabeth I.
..... Click the link for more information. , and the Oceana (1656) of James Harrington Harrington, James, 1611–77, English political writer. His Commonwealth of Oceana (1656) pictured a utopian society in which political authority rested entirely with the landed gentry.
..... Click the link for more information. .
In the 18th-century Enlightenment, Jean Jacques Rousseau and others gave impetus to the belief that an ideal society—a Golden Age—had existed in the primitive days of European society before the development of civilization corrupted it. This faith in natural order and the innate goodness of humanity had a strong influence on the growth of visionary or utopian socialism. The end in view of these thinkers was usually an idealistic communism based on economic self-sufficiency or on the interaction of ideal communities. Saint-Simon Saint-Simonianism. Partly because of their eccentricities, the Saint-Simonians achieved brief fame. Led by Barthélemy Prosper Enfantin and Saint-Amand Bazard , they organized a series of lectures (published in 1828–30 as L'Exposition de la doctrine de Saint-Simon
..... Click the link for more information. , Étienne Cabet Cabet, Etienne (ātyĕn` käbā`), 1788–1856, French utopian socialist.
..... Click the link for more information. , Charles Fourier Fourierism obtained a number of converts in France, and several newspapers spread the doctrines, but followers failed to establish any lasting colony there. After Fourier's death his principal disciple, Victor Prosper Considérant , tried to found a colony in Texas.
..... Click the link for more information. , and Pierre Joseph Proudhon Proudhon, Pierre Joseph (pyĕr zhôzĕf` pr
..... Click the link for more information. in France and Robert Owen Owen, Robert, 1771–1858, British social reformer and socialist, pioneer in the cooperative movement. The son of a saddler, he had little formal education but was a zealous reader.
..... Click the link for more information. in England are typical examples of this sort of thinker. Actual experiments in utopian social living were tried in Europe and the United States, but for the most part the efforts were neither long-lived nor more than partially successful.
The humanitarian socialists were largely displaced after the middle of the 19th cent. by political and economic theorists, such as Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, who preached the achievement of the ideal state through political and revolutionary action. The utopian romance, however, became an extremely popular literary form. These novels depicted the glowing, and sometimes frightening, prospects of the new industrialism and social change. One of the most important of these works was Looking Backward (1888), by Edward Bellamy Bellamy, Edward (bĕl`əmē), 1850–98, American author, b. Chicopee Falls (now part of Chicopee), Mass.
..... Click the link for more information. , who had a profound influence on economic idealism in America. In England, Erewhon (1872), by Samuel Butler Butler, Samuel, 1835–1902, English author. He was the son and grandson of eminent clergymen. In 1859, refusing to be ordained, he went to New Zealand, where he established a sheep farm and in a few years made a modest fortune.
..... Click the link for more information. , News from Nowhere (1891), by William Morris Morris, William, 1834–96, English poet, artist, craftsman, designer, social reformer, and printer. He has long been considered one of the great Victorians and has been called the greatest English designer of the 19th cent.
..... Click the link for more information. , and A Modern Utopia (1905), by H. G. Wells Wells, H. G. (Herbert George Wells), 1866–1946, English author. Although he is probably best remembered for his works of science fiction, he was also an imaginative social thinker, working assiduously to remove all vestiges of Victorian social, moral, and
..... Click the link for more information. , were notable examples of the genre; in Austria an example was Theodor Hertzka's Freiland (1890). The 20th cent. saw a veritable flood of these literary utopias, most of them "scientific utopias" in which humans enjoy a blissful leisure while all or most of the work is done for them by docile machines.
Connected with the literary fable of a utopia has been the belief in an actual ideal state in some remote and undiscovered corner of the world. The mythical Atlantis Atlantis (ətlăntĭs, ăt–), in Greek legend, large island in the western sea (the Atlantic Ocean).
..... Click the link for more information. , described by Plato, was long sought by Greek and later mariners. Similar to this search were the vain expeditions in search of the Isles of the Blest, or Fortunate Isles Fortunate Isles or Isles of the Blest, in classical and Celtic legend, islands in the Western Ocean. There the souls of favored mortals were received by the gods and lived happily in a paradise.
..... Click the link for more information. , and El Dorado El Dorado (ĕl`dərä`dō, –rā`–) [Span.
..... Click the link for more information. .
Satirical and Other Utopias
The adjective utopian has come into some disrepute and is frequently used contemptuously to mean impractical or impossibly visionary. The device of describing a utopia in satire or for the exercise of wit is almost as old as the serious utopia. The satiric device goes back to such comic utopias as that of Aristophanes in The Birds. Bernard Mandeville Mandeville, Bernard (măn`dəvĭl), 1670–1733, English author, b. Dordrecht, Holland.
..... Click the link for more information. in The Fable of the Bees (1714) and Jonathan Swift Swift, Jonathan, 1667–1745, English author, b. Dublin. He is widely recognized as one of the greatest satirists in the English language.
Early Life and Works
..... Click the link for more information. in parts of Gulliver's Travels (1726) are in the same tradition. Pseudo-utopian satire has been extensive in modern times in such novels as Aldous Huxley's Brave New World (1932). The rise of the modern totalitarian state has brought forth several works, notably Nineteen Eighty-four (1949), by George Orwell, which describe the unhappy fate of the individual under the control of a supposedly benevolent despotism.
Bibliography
See V. L. Parrington, American Dreams (2d ed. 1964); L. Mumford, The Story of the Utopias (rev. ed. 1966); M. Holloway, Heavens on Earth (2d ed. 1966); G. Negley and J. M. Patrick, The Quest for Utopia (1952, repr. 1971); E. Rothstein, H. Muschamp, and M. E. Marty, Visions of Utopia (2003).
Utopia
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