City University of New York (CUNY) CUNY Academic Works Publications and Research York College 2016 Counterfeit Letters and Fictional Trials: Thomas More’s Utopia as Cultural Brand Andie Silva CUNY York College How does access to this work benefit ou?y Let us know! More information about this work at: https://academicworks.cuny.edu/yc_pubs/172 Discover additional works at: https://academicworks.cuny.edu This work is made publicly available by the City University of New York (CUNY). Contact:
[email protected] Counterfeit Letters and Fictional Trials: Thomas More’s Utopia as Cultural Brand Andie Silva York College, CUNY
[email protected] Thomas More’s Utopia (1516) remains a text that defies straight-forward interpretations. Is it a political tract, a philosophical reflection, a Humanist satire, or some unique combination of these styles? As More himself disdainfully acknowledges in his prefatory letter to Peter Giles, the failure or success of Utopia relies on “the natures of men [which] be so divers” that, at best, they are sour and unpleasant and, at worst, “so narrow in the shoulders that he can bear no tests nor taunts” (A Fruteful, and Pleasaunt Worke of the Beste State of a Publyque Weale, 1551, A3r). Alongside the overwhelming number of paratextual materials which accompany each edition of Utopia, this letter points to the work’s tantalizing instability. More is at once overzealous about shaping the reception of his text and self-aware about the impossibility of authorial control. Regardless of what genre we choose to assign to it, Utopia may be primarily a work about mediation.