The Translation of Paradise: Thomas Moreâs Utopia and the Poetics of Cultural Exchange

Gabriela Schmidt

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The Translation of Paradise: Thomas Moreâs Utopia and the Poetics of Cultural Exchange

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Gabriela Schmidt

Gabriela Schmidt
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Page Range:: 23â52

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1163/9789042026032_005

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This essay is an attempt to interlink the origins of utopian literature with the history of humanist translation. It conceives of translatio â in the broad linguistic, spatial and cultural sense for which the term was used during the 16^th century â as a crucial structural principle and interpretive key to Thomas Moreâs Utopia, the founding text of the genre. From the very first pages of its 1516 principal edition, Moreâs enigmatic dialogue is steeped in problems of translation, which are symbolically anticipated in the imaginary Utopian alphabet and quatrain with which his text begins. Whether in the mythical origins of his model New World commonwealth, in its dealings with other nations, or in the envisioned transmittance of its moral and cultural accomplishments to early modern Europe, translation in Utopia is always simultaneously present as an ideal and as an illusion. By emphasising the fallacies inherent in the humanist dream of a perfect translatio between Classical antiquity and the present, More to some extent reconceives of translation as a dialogue in which both sides actively influence and profit from each other. This kind of productive openness is constitutive for the entire hermeneutical framework of Moreâs book, as its reader â faced with the impossibility of simple âtranslationâ â is forced to engage with the text in a creative process of adaptation and exchange.

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Futurescapes

Space in Utopian and Science Fiction Discourses

ä¸ç¼ï¼ Spatial Practices, å·ï¼ 9

ISBN:: 9789042026032

åºçç¤¾:: Brill

å°å·åºçæ¥æ:: 01 Jan 2009

Subjects
- Literature and Cultural Studies
  - Criticism & Theory
  - English & Anglophone

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African Studies	Education	Media Studies
American Studies	History	Middle East and Islamic Studies
Ancient Near East and Egypt	Human Rights and Humanitarian Law	Musicology
Art History	International Law	Philosophy
Asian Studies	International Relations	Religious Studies
Biblical Studies	Jewish Studies	Slavic and Eurasian Studies
Biology	Languages and Linguistics	Social Sciences
Book History and Cartography	Life Sciences	Theology and World Christianity
Classical Studies	Literature and Cultural Studies

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The Translation of Paradise: Thomas Moreâs Utopia and the Poetics of Cultural Exchange

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