More’s decision to place himself as a character in his Utopia finds more sophisticated de- velopment in Margaret Cavendish’s entrance into her own utopia, The Blazing World. But in the case of More, More-the-character appears at the very beginning of the narrative and even in sev- eral of the parerga while Cavendish herself only appears at the end of her utopian narrative. This curious “split” subjectivity of More—More-the-character and More-the-author—complicates understanding of both halves of this “split.” These two halves jointly exist in an impossible realm resembling Lacan’s notion of the Real. Bruce Fink gives the most succinct definition of Lacan’s notion of the Real: “The real is perhaps best understood as that which has not yet been symbolized, remains to be symbolized, or even exists ‘alongside’ and in spite of a speaker’s con- siderable linguistic capabilities” (25). More-the-author “remains to be symbolized” in the same way as More-the-character “exists ‘alongside’ and in spite of” the beliefs held by More-the- author as extrapolated from his other writings and biographical details. More’s conscious, or perhaps unconscious, vacillation between the crude dialectic of capitalism and communism plac-
1687), and John Wilkins (1614 – 1672). German philosopher Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646 –1716) also wrote about a priori languages. Incidentally, Lodwick began his publishing career with publications outlining philosophi- cal languages and at his death left only in manuscript his A County Not Named (composed 1675), an agrarian and communist utopian treatise.
es him in the Real, and, for Lacan, this places him in a somewhat “psychotic” space. Even at the end of the narrative, he has not yet symbolized himself, i.e., resolved the conflict of this prob- lematic dialectic, and thus remains at odds with himself in the same way that Utopia remains at odds with itself even five hundred years after it first appeared in print.
One of the most debated topics about Utopia lies in its at times contradictory messages about equality and freedom. Although emancipation of servitude could not have happened in More’s world, More-the-author presents an implicit approval of egalitarian attitudes among men (and women).68 After all, women get to see their future husbands naked before they marry just as men get to see them (as in Bacon’s New Atlantis). In addition, the acceptance of slavery in More’s work demonstrates his conflicting attitude towards indicting the society into which he was born, in which he grew up , and in which he became a very successful man. This makes More the true protagonist in the work, either More-the-narrator or More-the-author. Louis Marin argues that More
steps upon the stage only as subject of events in the text he writes, only to relin- quish this position in discovering that the events that affected him are not
weighty, factual events but discursive events that are weightless because they are the narrative of events that have happened to another. Thus the exactness More sought (and he says as much to Peter Giles) is not the referential exactness of a full signified; it is, rather, fidelity to another narrative, to the narrative of an other: utopia. (41)
But both More-the-character and More-the-author become the captive audience of Book II’s de- scription of what some see as almost a fascist society. In reading Utopia next to the tradition of
68 According to John Olin, “More is denying not that absolute equality is right, but that it is prudent. The common- wealth cannot be stable, prosperous, and happy without inequality” (19, Olin’s emphasis).
humanism, Jameson claims that More himself serves as a character in his own narrative, a char- acter that unknowingly has rejected his own fundamental beliefs about society and human na- ture:
Utopian figure would in this case be the sign of More’s dawning awareness of the inefficacy of those fundamental humanist instruments and categories which are rhetoric and persuasion. Utopia would then be generated, not by an overestima- tion of the powers of reason, as rather by an unformulated consciousness of its failure, and by Hythloday’s experience (in Book One) of the impotence of discur- sive argument and disputation in the making or at least the transformation of his- tory. (“Of Islands and Trenches: Naturalization and the Production of Utopian Discourse” 19)
Jameson here suggests that More betrays a wavering commitment to his humanist ideals to un- consciously favor a “transformation of history,” or, in other (Marxist) terms, a revolution of some kind, whether social, political, or economic.
If More-the-character serves as the protagonist of the work, he undergoes a change in state of mind, almost as in a bildungsroman. In the closing paragraphs of the work, he writes, “I first said, nevertheless, that there would be another chance to think about these matters more deeply and to talk them over with him more fully. If only this were some day possible!” (245). When the narrative shifts from Hythloday’s description of Utopia to More’s final assessment of it in a shift in focalization, the reader sees that More’s words no longer appear in quotation marks. This suggests a closing of the gap between More in Book 1 who disagreed with Hythloday vehemently to More in the concluding paragraphs who has become more willing to
interrogate the things that constitute the only reality he has ever known. 69 As critics have fre- quently noted, More composed Book 2 proper of Utopia before he composed Book 1.70 Almost immediately in Book II the reader notices that the point of view of the narrative has shifted and that Hythloday now speaks in the first person without quotations marks. Accepting More-the- character as the protagonist of the work underlines a change the thinking of More-the-character: “Meanwhile, though in other respects he is a man of the most undoubted learning as well as of the greatest knowledge of human affairs, I cannot agree with all that he said. But I readily admit that there are many features in the Utopian commonwealth which it is easier for me to wish for in our countries than to have any hope of seeing realized” (246-7).
THE AFTERLIFE OF MORE’S UTOPIA: SIXTEENTH CENTURY AND BEYOND
More’s text has of course had far reaching impact extending beyond early modern Eng- land. In their utopian texts of the seventeenth century, Francis Bacon and Margaret Cavendish cannot reconcile the implicit complications in creating a perfect society: Bacon left his New At- lantis unfinished and Cavendish’s Blazing World moves into the realm of the “fantastickal” (as she calls) when she retreats into her own mind and makes multiple “Blazing Worlds” in her im- agination.
Aside from the obvious references and influences found in major utopian texts such as Francis Bacon’s New Atlantis and Margaret Cavendish’s The Description of a New World, Called the Blazing World, references to More and Utopia appear frequently in writings from oth- er major early modern authors. For example, in his Defence of Poesy (written in 1579, first printed 1595), Sir Philip Sidney (1554-1586) writes,
69 The term “focalization” comes from Gérard Genette’s Narrative Discourse, p. 10.
70 George Logan demands that the reader read “the sections of Utopia—that is, in the order in which More meant them to be read—is the best critical procedure” (The Meaning of More’s “Utopia” 18).
But even in the most excellent determination of goodness, what philosopher’s counsel can so readily direct a prince, as the feigned Cyrus in Xenophon; or a vir- tuous man in all fortunes, as Aeneas in Virgil; or a whole commonwealth, as the way of sir Thomas More’s Utopia? I say the way, because where Thomas More erred, it was the fault of the man and not of the poet, for that way of patterning a commonwealth was most absolute, though he perchance hath not so absolutely performed it. (222)
John Foxe (1516-1587), author of the 1516 Acts and Monuments (aka, Foxe’s Book of Martyrs) mentions More’s Utopia in his A Sermon of Christ Crucified (1570), which largely praises Prot- estantism and denounces Catholicism.71 Francis Bacon’s (1561-1626) essay “Of Usury” from his collection, Essayes: Religious Meditations. Places of Perswasion and Disswasion. Seene and Allowed (1597) mentions Utopia in the context of its inability to end usury: “Therefore to speak of the abolishing of usury is idle. All states have ever had it, in one kind or rate, or other. So as that opinion must be sent to Utopia” (422). John Milton (1608-1674) mentions More in a little known 1642 pamphlet entitled “An apology against a Pamphlet Call’d A Modest Confutation,” and politician William Prynne (1600-1669), poet F. Quarles (1592-1644), politician John Coke (1563-1644), and True Levelers-founder Gerard Winstanley (1609-1676) all mention More.72
But references to More and his Utopia appear in more obscure texts as well, with refer- ences to both appearing in seventeenth century texts by poet Thomas Overbury (1581-1613), translator Thomas Holland (1539-1612), and poet Thomas Bancroft (1596-1658).73 Two minor utopian texts also mention More prominently: Samuel Hartlib (1660-1662) mentions More’s
71 Warren Wooden first noted this in a 1978 note in Moreana ("An Unnoticed Sixteenth Century Reference to More's Utopia")
72 For more on these references, see Tamura. 73 For more on these references, see Rude.
Utopia in his own utopian A Description of the Famous Kingdome of Macaria (1641); and bish- op Joseph Hall (1574-1656) mentions More in the anonymously published dystopian text, Mun- dus alter et idem sive Terra Australis antehac semper incognita; Longis itineribus peregrini Academici nuperrime illustrata (1607).74
The critical and scholarly attention afforded More’s Utopia has evolved with the evolu- tion in “fashionable” trends of literary scholarship, and discussion of Utopia frequently finds its way in non-literary scholarship as well. This present study engages in a search for elements of subjectivity, which has characterized much recent scholarship about not only early modern litera- ture but also literature before and since the early modern period. But using Lacan to understand More’s depiction of Utopia, with whatever we take that word to mean, places Utopia outside of the trends of historical scholarship and thus transforms More’s work into a more timeless and archetypal depiction of a supposedly “ideal” society. In the next chapter, I will demonstrate Francis Bacon’s conscious and obvious engagement with More’s Utopia through Bacon’s em- brace of strict control of its populace in the Lacanian Symbolic order.
CHAPTER 3: POWER IS KNOWLEDGE: FRANCIS BACON’S NEW ATLANTIS AND