Utopia

Sir Thomas More’s engaging description of Utopia, an island supporting a perfectly organized and happy people, was a best-seller when it first appeared in Latin in 1516. The book is a frame narrative primarily depicting a fictional island society and its religious, social and political customs. Locating his island in the (then) New World, More endowed it with a language and poetry, and detailed the length of the working day and even the divorce laws. Such precision gives a disturbing and exciting impact to Utopia, which still remains a book of the future. Despite modern connotations of the word utopia, it is widely accepted that the society More describes in this work was not actually his own perfect society. Rather he wished to use the contrast between the imaginary land’s unusual political ideas and the chaotic politics of his own day as a platform from which to discuss social issues in Europe.