ABSTRACT
If dialogue may be viewed as the matrix of early modern Utopian writing, ethnography is surely the form that provides its primary content. Both ethnography and travel writing function as components of early modern utopia; however, the two forms are so closely connected in these texts that they may be viewed as subsets of each other. Indeed, modern discussions reinforce this conclusion treating the same writers from both ethnographic and/or anthropological and travel writing approaches. Utopia consists in bulk of a long ethnographic description of Utopian society. It is easy to see how pastoral may be invoked in the minds of European consumers of New World ethnographies, in spite of the absence of actual shepherds. When the first reports by European explorers began to come out of the newly encountered territories of the Americas, they contained details remarkably reminiscent of pastoral settings.
