Joanne Paul: evaluation

Transcript context

…Do you read Thomas More’s Utopia as satire? Or Book 2, do you think he meant it? “This is the actual utopia.” I think Utopia is intentionally enigmatic. I think it’s a riddle. It’s a lot of different things. Certainly, satire is one of those things. He is trying to poke fun. If we take, for example, the passage about gold and precious jewels in the island of Utopia, they use gold as chamber pots. They use gold as chains to imprison their prisoners and their slaves. Those who therefore arrive on the island of Utopia covered in jewels and gems are laughed at. Gems are given to children to play with. Those who deck themselves out in all this wealth are laughing stocks. More is definitely doing something satirical with that, suggesting that in European courts, those who adorn themselves in such ways ought to be mocked. Why do they think that this metal gives them some sort of power or authority or status above anyone else? The idea that gold chains, in particular, signify servitude, I think is something he’s specifically suggesting in the text. That those who wear, for instance, chains of office, as he does in his famous Holbein portrait, that they are in some way enslaved by their service to the king. Satire is certainly a big part of Utopia. There are other elements of it as well, as we know. I think he’s trying to say something very pointed about the nature of the island of Utopia, as both obviously completely fantastic, unreal, impossible, while at the same time, there’s something about Utopia that I think he’s suggesting is more real than the world that he lives in. You think about his world, 16th-century Europe, you think of the world we live in today, it’s based a lot on artificial elements. Money, totally made up. Property, totally made up. Social hierarchy, totally made up. These are falsities. There’s nothing real or true about these things. These are the things that the Utopians have rejected in favor of things that are real, that are true, that actually have value. The investment in gold, the value of gold is false, is untrue. Whereas the Utopians value things that actually matter—virtue, food, water, clothing that is useful. I think he’s trying to make a point about that difference between falsity and reality, that Utopia is in some sense more real than the real world itself. The high degree of surveillance in this Utopia, is that intended as a good thing or a cautionary note, or we’re supposed to be ambivalent about it?…

Stored transcript either side of the excerpt. The highlighted words are the published quote; the surrounding text is unedited source, never generated.