Abstract

The year 2016 has seen a spate of Utopia-themed events triggered by the quincentenary of the publication of Thomas More’s Utopia. Suddenly, this little book, published in Latin in 1516, seems to have a new and wide following. In the United Kingdom, Somerset House has a year-long series on Utopia with a mainly artistic focus; the literary festival of the London School of Economics celebrated Utopia; the Coleridge Lectures in Bristol took Utopia as their title; and there have been events at Kings Place, in Antwerp, and in Lisbon. There is an irony here. While Utopia matters a great deal, Utopia does not. Hitherto More’s text has been read almost solely by scholars and students, as indeed he would have wished. Having...