Robert M. Adams’s popular translation of Utopia has been meticulously revised for this Second Norton Critical Edition as have the accompanying annotations, "Backgrounds" includes three new selections--from Saint Benedict, from a medieval satire on the Land of Cockayne, and from Tasso. ’The Humanist Circle," a carefully chosen selection of letters, includes another important contribution by Erasmus...

Robert M. Adams’s popular translation of Utopia has been meticulously revised for this Second Norton Critical Edition as have the accompanying annotations, "Backgrounds" includes three new selections--from Saint Benedict, from a medieval satire on the Land of Cockayne, and from Tasso. ’The Humanist Circle," a carefully chosen selection of letters, includes another important contribution by Erasmus. The "Backgrounds" section was assembled with the intention of helping student readers appreciate Utopia in light of different contemporary points of view.

"Criticism" includes five new thought-provoking essays by Alistair Fox, Edward L. Surtz, G. R. Ehon, Northrop Frye, and Robert M. Adams. Also new are selections from two modern anti-utopias or quasi-utopias Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World and B. F. Skinner’s Walden Two--plus a selection from Edward Bellamy’s once futuristic but now almost contemporary Looking Backward, which may be compared and contrasted with More’s masterpiece.

The Selected Bibliography has been thoroughly updated.

Preface to the Second Edition

Translator’s Note

The Text of Utopia

Backgrounds

Ovid · [The Golden Age]

Plato · [The Guardians]

The Acts of the Apostles

  [The Community of Love]

  [The Community of Fear]

Lucian of Samosata · [Saturn’s Agc]

St. Ambrose · Naboth’s Vineyard

St. Benedict · Monastic Rules

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

Cokayne

Tasso · Chorus from Act 2 of Aminta

Amerigo Vespucci · The First Voyage

  THE HUMANIST CIRCLE: LETTERS

Thomas More to Peter Giles

Peter Giles to Jerome Busleiden

Jerome Busleiden to Thomas More

Guillaume Bude to Thomas Lupset

Erasmus of Rotterdam to John Froben

Thomas More to Peter Giles

Erasmus to Ulrich von Hutten

Criticism

R. W. Chambers · The Meaning of Utopia

  · Utopia and the Problems of 1516

J. H. Hexter · The Roots of Utopia and All Evil

Alistair Fox · [An Intricate, Intimate Compromise]

Edward L. Surtz · Humanism and Communism

Robert C. Elliott · The Shape of Utopia

G. R. Elton · The Real Thomas More?

Northrop Frye · Varieties of Literary Utopias

Robert M. Adams · Paradise a la Mode

  INSIGHTS

C. S. Lewis · [A Jolly Invention]

J. W. Allen · [A Sad and Witty Book]

Elizabeth McCutcheon · Denying the Contrary: More’s

   Use of Litotes in the Utopia

Edward Bellamy · From Looking Backward

  ANTI-UTOPIAS

Aldous Huxley · From Brave New World

B. F. Skinner · From Walden Two

Suggestions for Further Reading