47. Utopia by Thomas More

The full title (More’s book was written in Latin) was De Optimo Reipublicae Statu deque Nova Insula Utopia (‘On the Best Form of a Republic and on the New Island of Utopia’). The name ‘Utopia’ was More’s neologism, and contained a double pun. It derived both from the Greek ou topos, ‘no place’, and eu topos, ‘good place’. The double pun was invoked by More, perhaps a little cryptically, in an introductory poem, ‘Lines on the Island of Utopia by the Poet Laureate Anemolius, Hythlodaeus’s Sister’s Son’:

UTOPIA was once my name,
That is, a place where no one goes.
Plato’s Republic now I claim
To match, or beat at its own game;
For that was just a myth in prose,
But what he wrote of, I became,
Of men, wealth, laws a solid frame,
A place where every wise man goes:
EUTOPIA is now my name.

(translation by Paul Turner, slightly modified)

The two terms ‘Utopia’ and ‘Eutopia’ suggest that the country is both good and nonexistent — too good to be true, one might say. Other names in the book also undermine the idea that what is being said is actually true or indeed sane: the traveller from whom More hears the report is Raphael Hythlodaeus, literally ‘Raphael the dispenser of nonsense’. And there are other Latin and Greek names that can be Englished as ‘Tallstoria’, ‘Blindland’ ‘Nolandia’, Aircastle’, ‘Nopeople’ and ‘Nowater’.

Consulted:
More, Sir Thomas: Utopia (translation and introduction by Paul Turner, Penguin, 1965)
Kautsky, Karl: Thomas More and his Utopia (Russell & Russell, 1959)

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