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The ‘Renaissance’ Big Read: Utopia by Thomas More
1 October @ 11:00 am – 12:00 pm
Ready to take your next journey of Discovery? The Renaissance: Journeys of Discovery at BRLSI is a year-long programme of talks and events exploring the many joys, discoveries and something of the broader cultural legacy of a movement still making waves in the 21st century. Brunelleschi, Michelangelo, Da Vinci, Martin Luther, Cervantes, Shakespeare, Chaucer, Machiavelli, Hieronymus Bosch, if you love culture then you’ll love our new series!
But what of the Big ‘Renaissance’ Read?
Thomas More’s original 1516 title for Utopia was On The Best State of a Commonwealth and On the New Island of Utopia.
Written in Latin during the great age of exploration, the discovery of a previously unknown island might not have seemed impossible. Written during an age of political power and corruption, the debates between Morus and Hythloday might have opened up new and possible ways of looking at the political landscape.
Thomas More, England’s leading humanist, a great Renaissance figure, was famous for his imagination and wit. So how is Utopia to be understood? A serious representation of political and social equality? A satire on unrealistic idealism? A scholar’s witty and clever game? Or a radical text as important today as it was in 1516? Join our regular in-house book group free to members and only £3 for non-members.
You’ll discuss all these questions and more – here’s a few other things to think about while you’re reading:
1. Do you agree that even today, Utopia remains an astonishingly radical and important text?
2. Does More’s apparent lighthearted playfulness add to, or detract from, the serious questions that underpin the text?
3. What use does More make of framing devices?
4. Do you think the systems put in place to achieve “the highest quality of living possible” are more “dystopian” than “utopian”’?
5. How does More present the longstanding and contradictory tensions between philosophical ideals and political realities?
