ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the author shows that the sub-genres identified as constituting early modern utopia continue to operate when utopia moves out of the fictional realm. Her contention is that the discourses attendant on these sub-genres transfer to the extrafictional realm with ease; they are generally considered to be non-fictional, as in the case of ethnography and religion, or quasi-fictional, as in the case of dialogue and, possibly, travel writing. It is evident that the articulation of actual, extrafictional utopian projects depends, like their imaginary counterparts, on forms available to the articulators and recognizable to their audiences. Many utopian experiments were carried out in the New World, beginning with Bishop Vasco de Quiroga's imitation, in New Spain, of the society described in Utopia. Among the utopian projects staged in the New World people may count the work of French Jesuits among the Huron, as well as the Puritan "errand into the wilderness" in New England.
