Thomas More Studies 1 (2006) 3 Thomas More Studies 1 (2006) George M

Thomas More Studies Volume 1 2006 Thomas More’s Utopia Humanist More GEORGE M. LOGAN Questions and Discussion No Lawyers in Utopia CLARENCE H. MILLER Philosophic Designs, Book 1 of Utopia JEFFREY S. LEHMAN Literary Designs, Book 1 of Utopia STEPHEN W. SMITH Questions and Discussion Political Designs, Book 2 of Utopia RICHARD DOUGHERTY Theological Designs, Book 2 of Utopia JOHN BOYLE Questions and Discussion Interpretation of Utopia as a Whole, Part 1 JEFFREY S. LEHMAN STEPHEN W. SMITH RICHARD DOUGHERTY JOHN BOYLE Questions and Discussion Interpretation of Utopia as a Whole, Part 2 with NATHAN SCHLUETER, MICHAEL P. FOLEY, SAMUEL BOSTAPH, JASON BOFETTI, GABRIEL BARTLETT, & RUSSEL OSGOOD, ESQ. Utopia, a Round Table Discussion with CLARENCE H. MILLER GEORGE M. LOGAN ELIZABETH MCCUTCHEON The Development of Thomas More Studies Remarks CLARENCE H. MILLER ELIZABETH MCCUTCHEON GEORGE M. LOGAN Interrogating Thomas More Interrogating Thomas More: The Conundrums of Conscience STEPHEN D. SMITH, ESQ. Response JOSEPH KOTERSKI, SJ Reply STEPHEN D. SMITH, ESQ. Questions and Discussion Papers On “a man for all seasons” CLARENCE H. MILLER Sir Thomas More’s Noble Lie NATHAN SCHLUETER Law in Sir Thomas More’s Utopia as Compared to His Lord Chancellorship RUSSEL OSGOOD, ESQ. Variations on a Utopian Diversion: Student Game Projects in the University Classroom MICHAEL P. FOLEY Utopia from an Economist’s Perspective SAMUEL BOSTAPH These are the refereed proceedings from the 2005 Thomas More Studies Conference, held at the University of Dallas, November 4-6, 2005. Intellectual Property Rights: Contributors retain in full the rights to their work. George M. Logan 2 exercises preparing himself for the priesthood.”3 The young man was also extremely interested in literature, especially as conceived by the humanists of the period. In the Renaissance, it’s important to understand, “humanist” was not the opposite of “religious”—didn’t have the fixed epithet “godless.” Renaissance humanism was, in fact, intrinsically neutral with respect to religion. A humanist was someone who cultivated the academic disciplines that were the core of what became known as “the humanities”: the study of classical Latin and Greek language, rhetoric, poetry, history, and moral philosophy. More clearly had a lot of spare mental capacity, because while studying law he also continued the studies of Latin composition he had begun in school, and began studying Greek with William Grocyn, who was the first person to teach it in England. So More was evidently contemplating, in his early adult years, a career as a priest—which would have fitted nicely with his humanistic studies. Grocyn was a cleric; and another of More’s mentors was John Colet, a priest and scholar who Humanist More1 became dean of St. Paul’s Cathedral and, in 1509, refounded the grammar school 2 attached to the cathedral, as the first of the English humanist grammar schools: a George M. Logan century later, long after it had become an Anglican cathedral and an Anglican school, John Milton attended it. Erasmus famously claimed that it was sex that convinced More that he wasn’t cut I. Introduction out to be a priest: “he chose to be a god-fearing husband rather than an immoral priest.” (As if that were the only choice.) Be that as it may, by early 1505, when More became a lawyer largely because his father, John More, did his best to steer More got married, he had clearly decided to stay in the world. And so his humanistic him that way. He sent Thomas to one of the best grammar schools in London; and studies would be only avocational, would be a spare-time activity of a man who, in then, when More was about twelve—in 1490—he managed to place him for two his career in law and, increasingly, politics, unfortunately wouldn’t have much spare years as a page in the household of John Morton, who was not only archbishop of time. Canterbury but Henry VII’s lord chancellor (and soon to be a cardinal as well). In the first two decades of the new century, though, he did find time to do a fair Seemingly through Morton’s agency, More matriculated at Oxford at about fourteen amount of writing, and what we wrote was mostly the kinds of things that humanists (which was not an uncommonly early age at the time); after a couple of years there, wrote: numerous Latin verse epigrams; translations, from Greek into Latin, of he was brought back to London about 1494, and enrolled at New Inn to begin his several short prose works of the second-century A.D. ironist Lucian (who was very legal education. much a kindred spirit for both More and Erasmus); and so on. And, far above all But of course there are lots of parents who want their children to become lawyers else, in the years from about 1513 to 1518, he wrote two great humanist works that whose children don’t become lawyers—and probably right here in this room there are also two of the best—most remarkable, most interesting, most influential— are a few parents who have either had this fate or are fated to have this fate at some books in the British literary tradition; and it’s to these two masterpieces—this is time in the future. And John More came pretty close to having his wish not realized, what I’ve come to Dallas for—Utopia and the unfinished History of King Richard the because in the years when Thomas was studying law, he was evidently tantalized by Third—that I want to devote the rest of my time this evening. What I’ll try to show another kind of career. About twenty years after this period, More’s friend the great about them is not just that they are humanist works—that’s a slam dunk—but that Dutch scholar Erasmus wrote, in a biographical account of More, that for a time “he the humanistic patterning they employ is fundamental to their success. applied his whole mind to the pursuit of piety, with vigils and fasts and similar II. Utopia 1 This address was given as the Annual Thomas More Lecture for the 2005 Thomas More Studies th Conference at the University of Dallas on November 4 , 2005, the following is a lightly edited First Utopia: Writing about the fifteenth-century Florentine humanist Leonardo transcription of Dr. Logan’s talk at the 2005 conference, and is thus nearly devoid of documentation. Bruni and his imitation of a classical Greek speech (Aristides’ oration in praise of For the complete audio version including the humorous introduction, go to Athens) in his own Praise of Florence, the great historian of Italian humanism Hans <www.thomasmorestudies.org/conference/audio2005.html>. 2 Baron characterized not only the importance of Aristides to Bruni but an important Dr. Logan is the principal editor of the Cambridge Utopia, co-editor of the Norton Anthology of English aspect of humanist imitation of the classics in general: In Aristides’ panegyric, Bruni Literature (5th-8th editions), and editor of the recently published History of King Richard III by Thomas More. He is the author of The Meaning of More’s “Utopia” (Princeton UP) and the Cappon Professor of English, Queen’s University, Canada. 3 Collected Works of Erasmus 7.21. Thomas More Studies 1 (2006) 3 Thomas More Studies 1 (2006) George M. Logan 4 “found…conceptual patterns which he could use to impose a rational order upon his cultivated land into sheep pastures, in the process creating mass pauperization and observations of the world in which he lived…the Greek model served to introduce the obliteration of many farmsteads and villages. patterns of thought that accelerated, or even made possible, the intellectual mastery Hythloday’s analysis began as a critique of English criminal justice, a response to a of the humanist’s own world.”4 fatuous and self-important lawyer at Cardinal Morton’s table—where More, as a A particularly clear example of the same process is provided by the famous page, had waited on table—a lawyer who is bemused by the fact that, though so many passage on English society in Book 1 of Utopia. Looking “to impose a rational order people are hanged for theft, the number of thieves does not appear to diminish. How upon his observations of the world in which he lived”—a world marked, for one did Hythloday get from that topic to the idle rich and their cast-off retainers and thing, by gross inequalities in the distribution of wealth—, More found what he evicted tenants? He got there because More had imbibed the fundamental premise of needed in Plato’s account of oligarchy in Book VIII of the Republic. For Plato, Greek political philosophy, that society is a web, a system of interlocking, oligarchy means plutocracy. An oligarchy is “a society where it is wealth that reciprocally affecting parts. What is wrong with English criminal justice is that it counts…and in which political power is in the hands of the rich and the poor have no attacks the symptom, not the cause. The principal cause of theft is found in poverty, share in it.” More’s primary narrator Hythloday, and no doubt More himself, saw in the creation of functionless people at the low end of the social scale: the not only England but all of Europe as a series of plutocracies—as More has unemployed and often homeless who, in the absence of a social “safety net,” have no Hythloday say in that famous sentence almost at the end of Utopia, “when I choice but to beg or to steal.

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