ABSTRACT

In 1515 Thomas More, on a diplomatic mission to Bruges completed Book II of his masterpiece Utopia which was published the following year. Although Book I followed the next year outlining the features of English society that Utopia was addressing, it is Book 2 of Utopia that has become the most famous discourse on the ideal society. Indeed, the word “utopia” has become the universal term for the ideal, whether achievable or not, the very embodiment of social aspirations to a perfect community. More invented the word, “utopia,” or “no place,” as opposed to “eutopia” or “good place,” but the genre of utopianism has come to refer to utopia as an ideal possibility of human community. The idea of perfection has given the term the character of a dream or an illusion, but still the term persists in Western consciousness as the very denition of the possibility of a better world.