Thomas More

Intermediate Diploma Thesis from the year 2004 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Literature grade: Good University of Hamburg (Institute for Anglistics/American Studies) course: Thomas More and his Utopia language: English abstract: There are strong indications that Utopia is not meant to be an alternative to existing states. More almost certainly never intended to write a political program for when he learned that Utopia was used by revolutionary reformist groups as a prescription he declared that if he had known he would have never written the book at all or if the manuscript already existed he would have had it burned. Literary critics have even seen Utopia mainly as a 'jeu d'esprit' of an intellectual. However from the contrast of a state which has banished all the mortal sins and exists on the premises of Christian moral grounds and of intelligence rather than on passion and ecstasy a form can be derived on which other states can be judged.