ABSTRACT
Thomas More works extensively in the social, political and economic areas with respect especially to the critique of the economic system. Apart from this fact, More’s work inaugurates a new literary genre: the utopian genre. This genre is characterized by a textual presentation of another reality, where there is a clash between the utopian world and the real world, and makes an alternative proposal. The imagination, the dream and the need for idealization structure the utopian genre, which aims to build another world, an alternate history, as Trousson argues:
If the work Utopia serves as support to the literary genre, however this comes down to a proposal of an alternative reality. In this work there is a strong political, social and economic criticism and a proposal to build a new society structured in other paradigms. But beyond this aspect, the work in question has a philosophical and literary dimension, one built by imagination, able to create another reality, enigmatic, mysterious, a non-place. Scholars hold different perspectives regarding the criteria to define the utopian genre, as shown by
In the sixteenth century, Thomas More opens with his work Utopia a new kind of philosophical, political and literary discourse: the utopian discourse. In his text the real and the imaginary intermingle. The dividing lines between fictional and political/philosophical accounts are tenuous. The reader finds it difficult to categorize the book Utopia, because it cannot be considered a political/ philosophical narrative for one finds many fanciful elements in this narrative; and it cannot be considered a novel, because the theme and many elements refer to real and specific data of English history. To counteract the real and the ideal world, More’s narrative blends the literary and the non-literary, the fictional and the historical. The author’s participation in the text expands the dialogue between fiction and reality.
