{"id":2636,"date":"2015-01-07T18:05:59","date_gmt":"2015-01-07T18:05:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thetravellerslastjourney.com\/shai\/?p=2636"},"modified":"2019-07-29T03:39:21","modified_gmt":"2019-07-29T03:39:21","slug":"thomas-more-utopia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thetravellerslastjourney.com\/shai\/2015\/01\/07\/thomas-more-utopia\/","title":{"rendered":"Thomas More &#8211; Utopia"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><strong>Journal:<\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Even before finishing this book<a href=\"#_ftnI\" name=\"_ftnrefI\"><sup>[I]<\/sup><\/a> I felt underwhelmed. First, it was too easy, as if any text from the 15th century needed to be difficult. Difficult because it should be foreign. And difficult because of one pre-existing standard for the text&#8217;s mould: Plato&#8217;s <em>Republic<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><strong>Essay:<\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Before, I had categorized this book as a combination of Plato and Swift<a href=\"#_ftnII\" name=\"_ftnrefII\"><sup>[II]<\/sup><\/a>. And so after, my thoughts were that it was insufficiently challenging and insufficiently fantastic.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><strong>Brainstorming<\/strong>:<\/p>\n<ul style=\"text-align: justify;\">\n<li>Structure: 1. Mixed thoughts on whether there&#8217;s much to be impressed-upon by this book. 2. [S-A]. 3. Commenting on the lite-ness of Utopia.<\/li>\n<li>S-A: Impressions I had when starting to read, based on readings, incl. Ackaroy, and including I1.<\/li>\n<li>I1: Incongruence of More&#8217;s humanism with his religious intolerance, with details of each.<\/li>\n<li>I2: Perspective of Utopia as stemming from More&#8217;s mind. Imagine it inside his mind.<\/li>\n<li>Could place writing itself into frame structure (cf. Utopia&#8217;s).<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><strong>Meta<\/strong>: Brainstorming:<\/p>\n<ol style=\"text-align: justify;\">\n<li>When writing has at least two trains ongoing in parallel: Journal (informal, free-flowing) and Essay (whose defining feature may be that it <em>can<\/em>\u00a0become a complete whole).<\/li>\n<li>List\/collect items of thought into categories, such as &#8211; <em>structure<\/em>\u00a0(of essay, incl. relations of content), and <em>section<\/em>\u00a0(i.e. an idea for an amount of continuous text [format: S-A, S-B]), and <em>idea<\/em>\u00a0(to be included somewhere [format: I1, I2]).<\/li>\n<li>A structure should have the property of <em>goal<\/em>, which itself may have a few different modes, e.g. idea to be presented, or an aesthetic construct<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><div class=\"su-divider su-divider-style-dotted\" style=\"margin:15px 0;border-width:2px;border-color:#2341f8\"><\/div>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><a href=\"#_ftnrefI\" name=\"_ftnI\"><sup>[I]<\/sup><\/a>\u00a0 &#8220;<em>Sir Thomas More\u00a0(7 February 1478\u00a0\u2013 6 July 1535),\u00a0venerated\u00a0in the\u00a0Catholic Church\u00a0as\u00a0Saint <strong>Thomas More<\/strong>, was an English lawyer,\u00a0social philosopher, author,\u00a0statesman, and noted\u00a0Renaissance humanist. He was also a <\/em>councillor<em> to\u00a0Henry VIII, and\u00a0Lord High Chancellor of England\u00a0from October 1529 to 16 May 1532. He wrote\u00a0<strong>Utopia<\/strong>, published in 1516, about the political system of an imaginary, ideal island nation.&#8221; For further details see\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Thomas_More\">https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Thomas_More<\/a><\/em>.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\"><a href=\"#_ftnrefII\" name=\"_ftnII\"><sup>[II]<\/sup><\/a> This is, probably, written in reference to <strong>Jonathan Swift<\/strong>, &#8220;Anglo-Irish satirist, essayist, political pamphleteer, poet and cleric who became Dean of St Patrick&#8217;s Cathedral, Dublin&#8221;. Swift is mostly known for &#8220;works such as A Tale of a Tub (1704), An Argument Against Abolishing Christianity (1712), Gulliver&#8217;s Travels (1726), and A Modest Proposal (1729)&#8221; (for further details see <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Jonathan_Swift\">https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Jonathan_Swift<\/a>). A substantial body of research exists linking Swift&#8217;s &#8220;Gulliver&#8217;s Travels&#8221; and Plato&#8217;s &#8220;Republic&#8221; (e.g. <a href=\"https:\/\/sites.google.com\/site\/jeffsliteraturecafe\/jonathan-swift-s-gulliver-s-travels-as-a-parody-of-plato-s-republic\">https:\/\/sites.google.com\/site\/jeffsliteraturecafe\/jonathan-swift-s-gulliver-s-travels-as-a-parody-of-plato-s-republic<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.academia.edu\/7094866\/Gullivers_Travels_and_Platos_Republic_The_Allegory_of_The_Cave_and_the_Philosophers_Education\">https:\/\/www.academia.edu\/7094866\/Gullivers_Travels_and_Platos_Republic_The_Allegory_of_The_Cave_and_the_Philosophers_Education<\/a>, and more.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Journal: Even before finishing this book[I] I felt underwhelmed. First, it was too easy, as if any text from the 15th century needed to be difficult. Difficult because it should be foreign. And difficult because of one pre-existing standard for the text&#8217;s mould: Plato&#8217;s Republic. Essay: Before, I had categorized this book as a combination [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[159,198,242,128,20],"tags":[252],"metadata":[155,171],"class_list":["post-2636","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-all-posts","category-book-review","category-evernote-entries","category-journal","category-philosophy","tag-thomas-more","metadata-brain-storming","metadata-editors-footnotes"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":2776,"url":"https:\/\/thetravellerslastjourney.com\/shai\/2013\/11\/14\/thursday-november-14-2013\/","url_meta":{"origin":2636,"position":0},"title":"Thursday November 14, 2013","author":"Pala","date":"November 14, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"This is, QED. 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Quote: \"[With Lucretius] it became possible - never easy, but possible - in the poet Auden's phrase to find the mortal world enough.\" {Preface} \"Acediosus, sometimes translated as \u201capathetic,\u201d refers to an\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;All Posts&quot;","block_context":{"text":"All Posts","link":"https:\/\/thetravellerslastjourney.com\/shai\/all-posts\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2855,"url":"https:\/\/thetravellerslastjourney.com\/shai\/2014\/05\/01\/thomas-paine\/","url_meta":{"origin":2636,"position":4},"title":"Thomas Paine","author":"Pala","date":"May 1, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"Thomas Paine; a story Background, some of it relevant and some of it decorative: Paine was born in Norfolk 1737, as England was beginning its industrial revolution. He received basic schooling, but was forbidden to learn Latin by his father (curious \"A.\" because this is a bias he would hold\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;All Posts&quot;","block_context":{"text":"All Posts","link":"https:\/\/thetravellerslastjourney.com\/shai\/all-posts\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2616,"url":"https:\/\/thetravellerslastjourney.com\/shai\/2013\/10\/12\/saturday-october-12-2013\/","url_meta":{"origin":2636,"position":5},"title":"Saturday October 12, 2013","author":"Pala","date":"October 12, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"Things I've done today include reading Scaruffi, I made a little progress in chapter 2 but soon became bogged down in details and paradigms that I must admit were a challenge. Not beyond comprehension, but requiring a slow studious read that inevitably results in a loss of perspective as regards\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;All Posts&quot;","block_context":{"text":"All Posts","link":"https:\/\/thetravellerslastjourney.com\/shai\/all-posts\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/padotI-Gw","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thetravellerslastjourney.com\/shai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2636","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thetravellerslastjourney.com\/shai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thetravellerslastjourney.com\/shai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thetravellerslastjourney.com\/shai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thetravellerslastjourney.com\/shai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2636"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thetravellerslastjourney.com\/shai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2636\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thetravellerslastjourney.com\/shai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2636"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thetravellerslastjourney.com\/shai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2636"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thetravellerslastjourney.com\/shai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2636"},{"taxonomy":"metadata","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thetravellerslastjourney.com\/shai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/metadata?post=2636"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}