ABSTRACT

No book about utopianism can sensibly fail to discuss the significance of Thomas More’s short tract Utopia, arguably the most well known of all spatial literary utopias. What is less well appreciated is the extent to which its account is very prescient about a number of education issues that are taken almost for granted today. For that reason I consider it warrants in this book a whole chapter to itself. Certainly, a working knowledge of the themes of More’s utopian vision, including the method through which he came to write it down, will enable us to appreciate better utopia’s potential to provide a distinctive vocabulary of ultimate hope. In addition, speculation about some of the personal factors which may have led More to write his utopia in the first place will point up ways in which applications of the utopian imagination can assist individuals to confront purposively and imaginatively crises of personal and professional identity.