ABSTRACT
More's Utopia also reveals the potency of topography as medium, combining as it does the history that is inscribed in the landscape, and the landscape that shapes history. On the one hand, Utopia's name and island status are permanent memorials of its foundation, when King Utopus renamed the former peninsula of Abraxa 'Utopia' and ordered its separation from the mainland: an extreme example of what the antiquarian John Leland calls the 'footprints' of history, which are imprinted in walls and ditches and changes to the landscape. The essay uses early modern medical theory to highlight the importance of place in determining national character, suggesting that – if we are to understand early modern writings touching on the potentially corrupting nature of foreign travel as anything other than empty rhetoric – then it is vital to restore this physiological context.
