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The Rhetoric and the Historical Context of Thomas More's Utopia As Keys to Grasp Its Political Message and Legacy

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The Rhetoric and the Historical Context of Thomas More's Utopia As Keys to Grasp Its Political Message and Legacy 10 The Rhetoric and the Historical Context of Thomas More’s Utopia as Keys to Grasp its Political Message and Legacy El contexto histórico y retórico de Utopía de Tomás Moro como clave para entender su mensaje político y su legado Vita Fortunati Abstract I will address three main characteristics of Utopia: 1. The importance of the formal structure and literary shape of Utopia, which are essential to grasp its political message, being the counterpart of its philosophical attitude and methodological approach for analyzing and criticizing the real world. I will argue that Utopia is a text which urges the hermeneutical search for truth besides representing a possible plan or a model to imitate or to follow; 2. Utopia foregrounds the relevance of rhetoric and communicative strategies in a society underlying the difference between public and private speech. In this respect Thomas More stresses the function of calm and civil dialogue based on mutual respect in an atmosphere of tolerance, where problems can be solved without violence; 3. In Utopia Thomas More lets the values of humanitas emerge and stresses the strong link between politics and ethics. Moreover, Utopia represents a new perspective where different cultural traditions, such as the Greek, the Roman, and the Hellenistic, as well as the Judaic and Christian ones converge and melt to build a new comprehensive and integrated synthesis where all these elements are reinterpreted by a sophisticated intellectual of the Renaissance milieu. Keywords: Rhetoric, historical context, satire, dialogue, litotes, humanistic culture. Resumen Me referiré a tres características principales de Utopía: 1. La importancia de su estructura formal y forma literaria, necesarias para comprender su mensaje político, que es la contraparte de su postura filosófica y enfoque metodológico para analizar y criticar el mundo real. Afirmaré que Utopía es un texto que insta a la búsqueda hermenéutica de la verdad además de representar un plan ejemplar o modelo a imitar o a seguir; 2. Utopía pone en primer plano la relevancia de las estrategias retóricas y comunicativas en una sociedad que constituye la base de la diferencia entre el discurso público y privado. Al respecto, Tomás Moro enfatiza la función del diálogo civil y tranquilo basado en el respeto mutuo en una atmósfera de tolerancia, donde los problemas se pueden resolver sin violencia; 3. En Utopía, Tomás Moro hace emerger los valores humanos y enfatiza el fuerte vínculo entre la política y la ética. Adicionalmente, Utopía representa una nueva perspectiva donde las diferentes tradiciones culturales, como la griega, la romana y la helenística, así como la judía y la cristiana, convergen y se integran para construir una nueva comprensión y una síntesis integral donde todos estos elementos son reinterpretados por un intelectual sofisti- cado del ámbito renacentista. Palabras clave: retórica, contexto histórico, sátira, diálogo, lítotes, cultura humanística. BY NC ND Utopía: 500 años Perfil del autor / Authors’ profile Vita Fortunati Full professor of English Literature, University of Bologna, Italy. E-mail: [email protected] 250 ¿Cómo citar este capítulo? / How to cite this chapter? APA Fortunati, V. (2016). The Rhetoric and the Historical Context of Thomas More’s Utopia as Keys to Grasp its Political Message and Legacy. En P. Guerra (Ed.), Utopía: 500 años (pp. 249-270). Bogotá: Ediciones Universidad Cooperativa de Colombia. doi: http://dx.doi. org/10.16925/9789587600544 Chicago Fortunati, Vita. “The Rhetoric and the Historical Context of Tho- mas More’s Utopia as Keys to Grasp its Political Message and Le- gacy”. En Utopía: 500 años, Ed. Pablo Guerra. Bogotá: Ediciones Universidad Cooperativa de Colombia, 2016. doi: http://dx.doi. org/10.16925/9789587600544 MLA Fortunati, Vita. “The Rhetoric and the Historical Context of Thomas More’s Utopia as Keys to Grasp its Political Message and Legacy”. Utopía: 500 años. Guerra, Pablo (Ed.). Bogotá: Ediciones Universidad Cooperativa de Colombia, 2016, pp. 249-270. doi: http://dx.doi. org/10.16925/9789587600544 The Rhetoric and the Historical Context of Thomas More’s Utopia as Keys to Grasp its Political Message and Legacy Introduction The working hypothesis of my contribution is that in order to understand the political message of Thomas More’s Utopia it is necessary to take into considera- 251 tion its rhetoric. In fact in the work there is an intertwined link between shape and content. The essay will analyze its literary devices: the use of dialogue and its hermeneutical function, the role of its different characters, the use of satire and irony, the symbolic value of the theme of journey. As is the case for all the masterpieces of humanity, there have been many interpretations of Thomas More’s Utopia, which have stratified in time. It was the very structure of this golden booklet (“libellus vere aureus”) that has given rise to a plethora of assessments that can be generally grouped in two main currents: the first has stressed the Catholic faith of the author and has thus readUtopia as a ‘moral allegory’, while the second has privileged his political and social proposal based on common property and consequently seen Utopia as a political manifesto. On the one hand, then, the interpretation supported by R.W. Chambers (1935), according to whom Thomas More is the champion of Medieval Christianity, of the communal values present in the life of the monasteries; on the other hand, that proposed by K. Kautsky (1979), for whom More is an exceptional precursor of modern socialism. The aim of my chapter is to demonstrate how the very struc- ture of Utopia shows exactly that, more than a plan or a project to carry out or to imitate, it is a method to analyze and criticize reality. Utopia then is not to be seen as a model on which to reconstruct the political and social world, but as a text that stimulates the discovery and the heuristic analysis of truth. The analysis of the work shall foreground how the shape of Utopia is set between political philosophy and rhetoric. Utopia configures itself as a textual device, a text construed thanks to the skillful use of rhetorical tropes, of cryptic allusions and quotations, which must be correctly deciphered by the reader. The Ambiguous Interplay between Fact and Fiction Utopia cannot merely be considered an extraordinary, self-contained rhetorical game, because it is deeply rooted in its time. Utopia was conceived in the summer of 1515 when More was taking a period of rest in the Flanders where he had gone as a member of a royal trade commission. Evidence has been provided for the fact Utopía: 500 años that he wrote Book II first and only later Book I, after he had gone back to London in October 1515. The work is structured in two books, and is well adapted to the utopist’s frame of mind: a first, negative,destruens part, which criticizes the evils that beset Henry VIII’s England, a second, positive, construens part, in which 252 the political, economic and moral characteristics of the new island, Utopia, are described and illustrated. This two-part structure underlines the close links exis- ting between utopia and satire (Elliot, 1970), a genre that More was fond of, as the explicit reference to Horace’s poetics shows: his booklet, Utopia, was supposed to amuse, entertain, but also instruct. Utopia is a complex work; it represents the summa of various types of knowledge, and reveals the familiarity with the various circles in which More, because of his political offices and competence, had the opportunity of moving. As attorney general and chancellor of the State he was well acquainted with the world of law and of the courts, and as a politician he was a part of the Royal court, and knew how to steer his course amongst intrigues and plots; as a thinker he enjoyed the company of the humanists of his day and of the academic world and, having taken part in important diplomatic missions, he did not hold cheap the world of commerce and finance. It is from his vast knowledge of the different strata of society that his great capacity for the lucid analysis of the evils of his world and for their objective judgment is born, together with his ability of making many linguistic styles and genres, such as jokes, satire, political essays and comedy, interact simultaneously. In Utopia two discursive strategies are juxtaposed: the first one is realistic and it is particularly evident in the first book structured as a dialogue, when More anatomizes, with merciless clarity, the disastrous effects of incipient capitalism, of the tyrannical regime of absolute monarchy and of the corruption of the clergy. The second one is the one he started himself, consisting in the speculative capacity of envisaging a completely different, other world, which is nevertheless described with a richness of details and a precision that render it believable. The strategy is descriptive and illustrates the political, economic and moral features of the new Island of Utopia. The rigor, almost an obsession, and the representational skill with which More describes an alternative society are powerful strategies to persuade the reader of the reality of Utopia, the country that does not exist. The very long title of this short work On the best State of a Commonwealth and on the new Island of Utopia A Truly Golden Handbook, No Less Beneficial than Entertaining by the Most Distinguished and Eloquent Author Thomas More Citizen and Undersheriff The Rhetoric and the Historical Context of Thomas More’s Utopia as Keys to Grasp its Political Message and Legacy of the Famous City of London and the subtitle of the first bookThe First Book of the Communication of Raphael Hythloday, Concerning the Best State of Commonwealth is clear evidence of the complexity of this exceptionally dense and highly ambiguous work.
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