Thomas More's Placement of Utopia in the New World Anonymous College

When French Renaissance humanist Thomas More placed the isolated island society of Utopia in the recently uncovered New World, it was not an arbitrary choice. More’s decision to locate this newfound and model world in the Americas endorses the underlying message of opprobrium towards the corruption found in fifteenth- and sixteenth-century Europe in Utopia. While the author’s account of Utopia is a portrayal of a seemingly idyllic and shiny faraway land, it serves as a socio-political satire about the immense corruption that populated the Western world during the time period with the aim to push Europeans to rethink the structure of society. By placing Utopia in the New World, he was able to criticize the Western culture of the time period by juxtaposing it to the ideally pure lifestyle of the Utopian civilization. Although its exact positioning in the Americas is ambiguous to the audience, More simultaneously enforces the idea that the necessary evolution of society is feasible by writing it from the perspective of a non-fictitious account in a knowingly real location, manufacturing the idea of the possibility of a societal reconstruction in the Old World.

By locating Utopia in the Americas, More is given the ability to...