Andie Silva
Counterfeit Letters and Fictional
Trials:
Thomas More’s Utopia as Cultural Brand
1>
Thomas More’s Utopia (1516) remains a
text that defies straight-forward interpretations. Is it a political tract, a
philosophical reflection, a Humanist satire, or some unique combination of
these styles? As More himself disdainfully acknowledges in his prefatory letter
to Peter Giles, Utopia’s failure or
success relies on “the natures of men [which] be so divers” that, at best, they
are sour and unpleasant and, at worst, “so narrow in the shoulders that he can
bear no tests nor taunts” (A Fruteful,
and Pleasaunt Worke of the Beste State of a Publyque Weale, 1551, A3r).
Alongside the overwhelming number of paratextual materials which accompany each
edition of Utopia, this letter points
to the work’s tantalizing instability. More is at once overzealous about
shaping his work’s reception and self-aware about the impossibility of
authorial control. Regardless of what genre we choose to assign to it, Utopia may be primarily a work about
mediation.
2>
While there is still controversy about what properly defines “utopia” as a
genre, modern critics acknowledge that the term typically describes a style blending
travel narrative, political ideology, and prose fiction.[1]
Due to its innovative structure, Paul Saltzman argues that the Utopian genre
can only be understood from a modern perspective, since “More’s Utopia itself seems to have been
interpreted in the early seventeenth century not so much as a particular kind
of prose fiction as a particular kind of concept [...] as a model of argument
rather than a creator of a genre” (29). This article intervenes in the debate
around Utopia’s genre by arguing that
marketing and design practices developed by printers, publishers, and editors
(henceforth “print agents”) contributed to making Utopia not only a recognizable genre but a brand name in its own
right. Print agents took advantage of Utopia’s
malleability by shaping the book’s paratexts to attract their own
pre-established markets. Eventually, each editorial change aided in branding Utopia as part of a recognizable set of protocols
that could be sustained independently of More or his original narrative.
3>
Utopia’s print agents faced the
challenge of not only marketing a text by a controversial author (and potential
traitor to the crown), but also of instructing their readers on the
peculiarities of this new style. Published in English seven times and
translated twice between 1551–1639 (Ralph Robinson’s translation, which was
printed in 1551, 1553, 1597, 1624, and 1639; and Gilbert Burnet’s anonymous
translation printed in 1684 and 1685), the work addressed conflicts between past,
present, and future England by engaging with socio-political dissatisfactions and
theorizing on the nature of place and nationhood. As a product of the work of
print agents and, later, an iconic signifier for cheap-print pamphlets about
the Civil War, the word “utopia” grew to become an iconic cultural brand for
the early modern reader—one which could represent (and also disrupt) the status
quo and challenge readers to re-interpret not only literary texts but the very
makeup of English politics.[2]
To understand how print agents’ specific strategies functioned to give Utopia its market and cultural value, we
may turn to marketing theory on iconic brands, as outlined by Douglas B. Holt
in How Brands Become Icons (2004).
Modern marketing theory provides us with a unique vocabulary with which to
identify the deliberate strategies print agents used to define their markets.
Holt’s concept of “cultural branding” is particularly helpful in explaining how
and why print agents managed to make Utopia such a pervasive and long-lasting
influence in early modern culture and politics. A brief overview of what
defines a product as a brand (rather than simply a useful material object) is
thus necessary.
4>
Market theorist F. J. Levy argues that marketing offers foremost a symbolic
value: the work of ad men is less to prove a product’s superiority but rather
to demonstrate how the product impacts the consumer’s own life. So, for
example, a print agent advertising Utopia
cannot simply take advantage of the popularity of travel narratives; in order
to “sell” he must also offer consumers a unique, new value that distinguishes
More’s work from other publications. Building on this, Holt suggests that what
elevates a product to a brand is in part its capacity to engage in social
change, offering idealized solutions for the most current social anxieties.
Holt conceptualizes “iconic brands” as those that are able to transcend
fleeting popularity and become part of the consumer’s everyday cultural
experiences. His case-studies include Coke, Budweiser, and Harley
Davidson—American brands that have established themselves as a memorable part
of mass culture across different generations and historical contexts. These
iconic brands have, following Holt, reached a status of cultural branding that
has made their product and social message instantly recognizable even to
non-consumers (e.g. Coke’s message of cross-cultural diversity as exemplified
by ads like Mean Joe Green’s “Hey Kid, Catch!”). Successful cultural branding must
therefore present a unique story or identity that adapts to the consumer’s
social, ideological, and historical needs. According to Holt, cultural icons
typically feature:
·
a
reliable story, or “identity myth,” that addresses current social anxieties (39
ff.);
·
versatile
historical awareness, wherein the brand becomes “a historical entity whose desirability
comes from myths that address the most important social tensions of the nation”
(38); and
·
“cultural
and political authority,” that is the credibility to participate in social and
political conversations (95 ff.)
5>
When these elements combine, the brand becomes an active, recognizable part of
popular culture by inviting the consumer to see herself as a trusted investor,
responsible for sustaining the brand’s reliability and longevity. Identity
myths combine the brand’s material elements and its identity values: while each
product will have specific qualities that distinguish it from other
competitors, these elements, or “markers” only mean something to an audience
when they can be used to tell a specific story.[3]
This is a key factor for understanding how print agents marketed Utopia and the ways the text lent itself
to new kinds of packaging and interpretations.
6>
According to Holt, the ability to open up spaces for dialogue and dissent is
the mark of a cultural icon. Iconic brands stand out by their populist appeal;
they do not represent the ruling class or prevailing ideologies but instead
“are usually set in populist worlds: places separated not only from everyday
life but from the realms of commerce and elite control” (9). As a result,
brands become cultural icons because of their ability to fabricate an ideal: a
story that is believable enough to attract the consumer, but unlikely enough to
provoke the spark for concrete social change. Within this perspective, Utopia’s fiction can be said to invite readers
to “address cultural anxieties from afar, from imaginary worlds rather than
from the worlds that [they] regularly encounter in their everyday lives” (8).
If Utopia accomplishes this
successfully across multiple and distinct moments in English history, much
credit goes to the enterprising labor of each print agent.
Creating
a National Brand
7> The first Latin
edition of Utopia was printed in 1516
by Dirk Martens and, as indicated by the numerous prefatory letters, emerged
from the collaboration between Thomas More, Peter Giles, and Erasmus. Three
more editions appeared in 1517 and 1518 (in that year Johannes Froben printed
two consecutive editions) overseen by More and Erasmus. No Latin edition
contains the same paratextual materials in quite the same order, and many
editions add or omit paratexts with no apparent organizing logic. In addition
to the two books that compose the body of the text, the first edition includes
letters from More to Giles, from Giles to Jerome Busleiden, from Busleiden to
More, and from Johannes Paludanus to Giles.[4] This first edition additionally contains: a meter in the
“original” Utopian tongue; verses by the supposed poet laureate of Utopia; a
verse from humanist Cornelius Grapheus to the reader; a Utopian alphabet
(presented by Peter Giles); and a map depicting the island. In the second edition, printed in 1517 in
Paris, More adds two more letters: one from Jerome Budé to Thomas Lupset and a
second letter to Peter Giles. He also removes the Utopian poem and alphabet. One
more letter is added to the 1518 edition, where Erasmus addresses their new
printer, Froben. The abundance and variety of prefatory letters in More’s Utopia
no doubt provided an open invitation for future print agents to act as editors,
compilers, and critics. Although scholars have discussed at length the
significance of the original paratexts in particular, and Utopia’s literary contributions in general, a closer analysis reveals
that print agents had a unique role in marketing the text to middle-class
buyers and readers.[5]
8> The first two
English editions of Utopia, printed
by Abraham Vele, highlight the work’s appeal to the middle-class book buyer
while simultaneously downplaying More’s own controversial status. As David Weil
Baker rightly claims, the title-pages of the 1551 and 1556 editions respectively
undermine and re-establish translator Ralph Robinson’s social position by
presenting him first as a “citizen and goldsmith of London” and then as
“sometime fellowe of Corpus Christi college in Oxford.” While Baker ascribes
this editorial choice to Robinson, Abraham Vele likely played a significant
role in composing these title-pages. A
profitable and savvy printer, Vele knew to re-package the work to make it
appeal to a broader variety of tastes, presuming perhaps that most of his
potential buyers might be more interested in Utopia as a New World
travel narrative, and not for its Humanist values.
9> As the allusions
to Diogenes and frequent references to More’s broader Humanist connections
indicate, Robinson’s prefatory letter reveals a desire to reach a Humanist audience.
Vele, however, sets the full title of Utopia
to function with and against Robinson’s dedication, disrupting and
reframing his high-literature persona. The title maintains a linguistic
semblance to the original Latin title, and was likely submitted by the
translator: A fruteful, and pleasaunt worke of the beste state of a publyque
weale, and of the newe yle called Vtopia. The attribution that follows
advertises Thomas More as a “knyght,” while Robinson is a “citizen and
goldsmyth of London,” and his friend Tadlowe is a “citizen haberdasher of the
same cittie.” Since the Latin title refers to More as “the distinguished and
eloquent author Thomas More citizen and sheriff of the Famous City of London”
(Kinney 34), the choice of appellatives does not seem to stem from Robinson’s
translation. Instead, Vele’s choice draws a direct connection between the
author and translator’s social status and his potential readers’ own
middle-class background. His title-page targets two markets at once: the
ambitious readers who would want the association with trendy, popular
literature and those who want to feel that this access is within their reach,
produced by citizens whom, like them, aspire to aristocratic connections.
10> The popularity of the first printed edition, coupled with the
ascension of a Catholic ruler in 1553, must have encouraged Vele to produce a
new edition of Utopia. The title-page for the 1556 edition more
explicitly advertises Utopia as a literary, cultural product. Under
Queen Mary, now-Catholic-martyr More can be praised as “the right worthy and
famous Sir Thomas More knight” (emphasis mine), while Robinson earns the
distinction of a “fellow of Corpus Christi College in Oxford.” Besides being
“newly perused and corrected,” the second edition further boasts of “divers
notes in the margins,” most of which are translated from the Latin and some
which were added by Robinson himself. In addition to translations of the
original paratextual materials (including some letters and poems), this edition
features an epistle from Vele himself, labeled “the printer to the reader.” In this closing address, Vele
apologizes to his readers for not including the Utopian alphabet to which Peter
Giles refers in his letter to Jerome Busledein (in this edition the letter
immediately precedes Vele’s addendum). Vele in turn claims that “I have not as
yet the true characters or fourmes of the Utopiane letters [...] seyng it is a
tongue to us muche straunger then the Indian, the Persian, the Syrian, the
Arabicke, the Egyptian, the Macedonian [...] etc” (ns). By adding this note, Vele
chooses to actively participate in More’s satire, promising the appearance of
something he certainly knew was not real. Even if Vele had seen a Latin or
continental edition containing the printed alphabet, his note deliberately
compares the Utopian tongue with real-world languages and joins in the dialogue
of the letters by referring specifically to Giles’s letter appended before the
poems. Furthermore,
Vele’s epistle also functions as a playful marketing move towards a possible
third edition, presenting Vele as a print agent engaged in using his personal
resources to improve and enhance his publications.
11> Vele’s participation in the ruse, and not simply his note
promising more paratexts, helps reinforce Utopia’s market value as
satire. In order to solidify the unique story this text presents and give it an
identity myth, Vele lends his own credibility to the fiction. Savvy readers
would eventually learn to recognize through paratextual materials what
distinguished Utopia from other available travel narratives: depending
on its framing devices, the work opened itself up to new contexts, new social
circles, and even new social critiques. Utopia’s popularity for both printers
and readers appears to die out for over forty years, but interest in More and
his ideal commonwealth must have remained strong, particularly as the political
threat associated with More’s name began to dissipate. Hence, the work’s
identity myth accordingly began to lose its more explicit allusions to the
humanist project in general, and More’s politics in particular. In the three
editions discussed below, we may see Utopia
working across a new set of historical contexts.
12>
Thomas Creede’s edition at the end of the sixteenth century is modest yet
powerful evidence that Utopia’s
popularity continued to justify new publications. Creede, who often financed
his own publications, published his reprint in 1597 without modifying much from
Vele’s 1556 edition—choosing to leave out only Vele’s and Robinson’s envoys to
the reader.[6] Creede’s edition
is nonetheless an important turning point. As the House of Stuart rose to the
throne, English citizens began to experience increasing political
instabilities. The constant clashes between the Privy Council and the king
would eventually lead to Civil War. Amidst this political mine field, print
agents’ marketing strategies expanded the context of Utopia beyond a
topical, widespread critique of Henrician politics, making it more appropriate
to their current political climate. The Utopia brand begins to solidify in the popular
imagination by becoming a constant amongst political and social changes in
England. As a new generation of readers became invested in such changes, print
agents adjusted the text’s identity myth to meet the needs of their growing
market.
13> Bernard
Alsop, Creede’s former apprentice, is responsible for the next edition of Utopia in 1624. He makes the crucial
decision to change the title of his edition, effectively using the text’s most
iconic marker to create a simple, recognizable brand name: “Sir Thomas More’s
Utopia” appears atop the title-page, highlighting the word “utopia” in capital
letters. Alsop reframes the text to call attention to its recognizable literary
inheritance—an important element for the brand’s value—by including a
frontispiece with a large engraving of More and, below it, an inscription in
Latin. This title-page describes More as “right honorable and worthy of all
fame” and “lord Chancellor of England,” in line with Alsop’s evident interest
in rescuing the author’s historical importance and political authority. The
Latin inscription further helps readers associate More with the classical
tradition. Even for a reader unable to understand that the inscription praises
More’s sacrifice as a Catholic martyr, Alsop’s choice of Latin immediately
inscribes the work as a valuable literary commodity. Although Alsop, like Vele
and Creede before him, begins with the commonplace announcement that this new
edition is “newly corrected and purged of all errors happened in the former
editions,” this print agent is much more invested in reinventing Utopia as a recognizable brand name. As Holt explains, “brands that author a
successful myth earn the right to come back later with new myths that touch on
the same cultural concerns” (125). Alsop realizes that Utopia is by now a marketable name, and that it therefore merits a
new history. The repackaging extends beyond the branding title “Utopia” and the
engraving of More on the title-page: it is further reinforced by Alsop’s
dedicatory epistle to Cresacre More, Thomas More’s great-grandson, who was then
working on a biography of More.[7]
14>
Inheritance
is an important theme for Alsop, and his dedication highlights both lineage and
literary status as essential qualities of the More family. The print agent
defines his motives as “noble,” and purely in the interest of preserving the
text as Cresacre’s birth right. Alsop attaches the “honorable pedigree” carried
by the More family to the book’s own virtues, which as a genre is “yet
unparalleled in that nature” and thus deserves to be shared with a new
generation of readers (A2). To fuel interest for a book whose popularity was
already established, Alsop builds up its historical value as an English
landmark. In a surprisingly elitist move, Alsop claims that failing to dedicate
the work to Cresacre would be “a theft of the worst nature [...] and I might as
well take from you the Lands of the Honorable and auncient Family of Cresacre
(with which God and your right hath endowed you) as bestow upon a stranger this
glorious Commonwealth” (A2v). By elevating the book to the value of an
inheritable commodity, the print agent highlights Utopia’s material and
social attributes. The reader who owns this copy can feel like he is part of
this cultural inheritance even if he does not own lands and cannot claim any
rights to the work itself. This in turn makes the book at once old and new:
reclaiming More’s lineage and history is an innovative strategy that only works
because Utopia is by now far removed from More’s reputation as traitor
and his problematic Catholic identity.
15> Whereas Abraham Vele had to devise specific marketing strategies
to frame the work as accessible to the middle-class buyer, Alsop moves somewhat
in the opposite direction, building an established, aristocratic lineage for
the book and its author. At the same time, however, Alsop also makes the work
highly attractive to readers who might see books as status symbols. While each
print agent highlighted the social capital of Utopia, their unique
contexts expand the amount and variety of readers, always inviting new groups
to identify with the brand’s identity myth. By purchasing the book, the
reader also buys into More’s rebranded status as literary, cultural, and English
inheritance. In many ways, this is the edition that truly brands Utopia (and, in turn, More) as the text
(and author) we know and edit today. As Holt has argued, the power of the brand
resides not simply in the product, but in its ability to renew itself according
to new consumers, new identities, and new contexts. It is not until 1624 that Utopia can emerge as a canonical text,
with a praised author and a long, venerable history. Once Utopia
becomes established as genre representative of satirical criticisms of
government,[8]
the association with More fades into the background, leaving only a generic
brand reference that authors and print agents can apply to various literary and
marketing contexts.
16>
Political and social discontent had grown exponentially during the time between
1624, when Alsop first reprinted and rebranded Utopia, and 1639, when he decided to put out his second edition of Utopia. England was facing increasing
poverty, loss in international trades, and out-of-control population growths.[9] The growing
conflicts between Parliament and Charles I brought on popular dissatisfaction
and domestic unrest, whereas the Bishops’ War of 1639 ominously foretold an
imminent Civil War. If Thomas More’s controversial status sometimes clouded Utopia’s true message, Alsop’s
rebranding in 1624 allowed the author’s history to fade away from the book’s
new packaging. By his second edition, new social conflicts encouraged Alsop to foreground
the ideological connotations of the work. Evidence of the print agent’s
constant renegotiation of his brand, Alsop’s 1639 edition changes the title
once more, this time highlighting the island’s political structure: The Commonwealth of Utopia. By
re-focusing the new edition on its central narrative, and not so much on
patronage or authorship, Alsop is able to remind English readers that the story
(or identity myth) told by Utopia
provides a space in which to rehearse their political and social anxieties. The
island of Utopia, after all, held a government that hid under its “ideal
commonwealth” a harsh control of its citizens, closed borders, and non-existent
property laws. Although he addresses the same patron, Alsop’s new dedication to
Cresacre More is much more subdued and appears less invested in reinforcing the
text’s aristocratic values. This edition is trimmed of its paratexts as well,
omitting More’s letter to Giles and all the poems that close the work after
Book II. Alsop likely felt that a government-themed Utopia would better cater to his reader’s interests, and reworked
the edition to step away from the text’s more ironic and playful aspects to
focus instead on its political relevance. Holt argues that the most iconic
brands help its consumers imagine resolutions for the anxieties brought on by
“tensions between ideology and individual experience” (57); in this case,
tensions between what the national, English ideal was supposed to represent
(lawfulness, monarchy, economic superiority) and what citizens were experiencing
(injustice, poverty, an overbearing government). Utopia, even as it fails to resolve any of these conflicts,
provides room for conversation and hope for reform.[10] By
removing the additional paratexts and changing the title once more, Alsop
shifts Utopia’s themes to attend to
the interests of his market. The new title signals a different marketing
approach that helps potential readers recognize the political capital of
Alsop’s new edition.[11]
17>
Utopia thus became an iconic brand as
a result of its unique textual production history, the ever-changing status of
its polarizing author, and a malleable yet attractive identity myth. Taking on
anxieties about More as historical and political figure; the expansion of the
New World; and English political instability, the print agents responsible for
circulating More’s Utopia created a
unique identity myth that could be immediately recognizable and yet could just
as easily lend itself to new interpretations. A thorough look at the history of
Utopia’s English editions demonstrates
this brand-making process. Vele and Robinson at first attempted to legitimize
the work while still making it appeal to a middle-class public; Alsop repackaged
More and his text as English literary landmarks. By the end of the seventeenth
century, the word “utopia” could be used to label anything that referred to a
remote location, an ideal society, or a political complaint.
Generic Cultural Branding
18>
If we are to fully understand the staying power of utopia as a name-brand, we
must broaden our definitions of the kinds of popular texts Utopia eventually influenced. Gary Saul Morson acknowledges that
“nonliterary (tractarian) utopias have been important in establishing the
conventions according to which utopian literary works have been interpreted,
and so have helped constitute the generic tradition” (78). Yet, Morson
qualifies this point by claiming that a distinction must be made between
ideology and fiction, since the latter need not provide supporting evidence or
historical groundwork for its claims. This distinction between fiction and
nonfiction, however, is blurred in the case of ephemeral pamphlets, which were
produced to address specific historical moments and yet often did so under the
guise of a fantastical story. The pamphlets discussed below take on
pre-established reading protocols from Utopia,
building on readers’ previous knowledge to construct new stories. In doing so,
they manage to extract Utopia’s most
abstract markers and apply them generically to vague (often ironic) concepts of
justice, religion, and lawfulness. This generic marketing approach relies on
the “reduction of the brand to a handful of abstract concepts” (Holt 20),
effectively employing protocols that guide book-buyers toward books that can
increase their social capital. Even if they have no direct link with More’s
original work, these generics help connect readers with the growing genre and
advance the English identity myth created by its previous print agents.
19>
Arguably, one of the features that distinguish More’s work from other fictional
ideal worlds (and makes it a cultural icon) is its political exigency. The
narrative depends on the constant production and denial of expectations: More
is the voice of the preface, but he is not Morus, the narrator; Giles and his
fellow humanist collaborators testify to the fictional island’s existence only
to make it absurdly unreal; Morus describes the ideal commonwealth only to
reject it at the end, and so on. This assertion and denial process forces the
reader to question not just where or what Utopia is, but what is “ideal” (and whether that ideal is even
desirable). This quality separates More’s narrative from other contemporary
English works that represent more straight-forward ideologies or imaginary
voyages. It is precisely this feature that benefits these brand generics and in
the seventeenth century gives print agents, writers, and readers a place to
confront the political instabilities of the Civil War. The anonymous The King of Utopia his letter to the
Citizens of Cosmopolis, the Metropolitan City of Utopia (1647) is perhaps
the best illustration of such a trend. The
King of Utopia may be the first appearance anywhere of a work marketing
itself as a “Utopia generic”: it
takes up the brand created by Utopia’s
print agents and uses it to advertise
a different text altogether.
20> The King of Utopia utilizes the word
“utopia” both in its paratext and as part of its narrative, introducing a fictionalized
political context (and imitating the utopian genre) without any interest in
recreating More’s narrative or furthering the fictional island of Utopia. If
indeed the first reference to Utopia
as a form of branding does not appear before the mid-seventeenth century, this
pamphlet may be concrete evidence that Bernard Alsop’s 1624 edition was centrally
responsible for branding the work with its single, most recognizable marker.
The name “utopia,” at first a direct reference to the island of Utopia, becomes
a generic reference that could be used to market and describe texts that
tackled political ideology by creating fictional worlds. That this text is
written after the beginning of the Civil War is also an important marker, since
the island Utopia will serve as an imaginary location for resolutions on both
sides.[12] The King of Utopia’s anonymous author
and fictional translator claims to have found two letters, both written
originally in the Utopian tongue: in the first, Cosmopolis’s King justifies his
absence to his citizens, revealing the circumstances (and individuals) that
have kept him from returning to the city. The Citizens’ response follows suit,
urging the king to return and promising him that a loyal and supportive people
await him in Cosmopolis. Most of the pamphlet is overtaken by obscure
references and metaphors. The King never directly explains who or what has “so
puzzled my pentarquie” (A1) or what events could actually bring him back to the
throne. The King’s mention of his pentarquy should clue in the reader that this
is an “every man” monarch, intended as a universal figure representative of all
Christian kingdoms. The King proclaims his own fictional yet particularly
English identity, citing a maxim of state “observed ever since that beautifull
English Moore made Utopia a Monarchy” (A1v). The Utopia
named in this pamphlet is simultaneously a fictional and a real place—the king
and his citizens recognize themselves as Utopian in the same sentence where
they point to the pamphlet’s parent text and author.[13]
The generic-branding reference to More functions to indicate that Utopia is not
simply an ideal “no place”; instead, it is an in-between space where the reader
can confront his anxieties about the return of monarchy.
21>
The King’s letter urges his citizens to hope for his return, but also to
understand the extreme strain under which he finds himself both physically and
mentally: “I am retarded, anticipated and restrain’d from my intentions [...] my
thoughts are as Civil War within my breast, like evil members in a good
commonwealth” (f.2). The absent monarch embodies the land itself, placed under
a domestic conflict that he cannot resolve without his citizens. Reality and
fiction coexist in this generic Utopia: the author, masked as translator, uses
a fictional location to give voice to English struggles. In this imagined
scenario, the nostalgic reader can share with the King a longing for his
return, and read his own feelings reproduced in the citizens’ letter. Of
course, part of Utopia’s identity
myth is that it challenges a straight reading. Its contradictions force the
reader to question the government being portrayed and to look for a solution to
the problem of interpreting the text. The author of The King of Utopia attempts a similar double-move, obscuring the
King’s true meaning behind metaphors as well as a faux-translator’s
deliberately poor interpretations. The two letters appear to be intentionally
convoluted, are often absurd and overly symbolic, and make it almost impossible
to extract anything beyond the fact that the King seeks to return and that the
citizens are ready to receive him.[14]
22>
The citizens’ answer reinforces this circular language by expressing their loss
in a series of paradoxes:
“we mourne without sorrow, starve
with satiety, weep and laugh, move yet sit still, fast and feast [...] be not then
(as our most pious physitian) negligent, but speedily yield thy royall remedy
to our unstable (and infirme) condition [...] regulate our libertie, and captivate
our senses in the service of thy vertues: let the memory of our learned
Licurgus, that unparalel’d mirror of his time, the glory of his nation, make us
more Lovers of Moor for this institute of our Utopian commonwealth [...] briefly he in our monarchy drew the picture
of al happy governments, and our ingrateful hands have disfigured the figure […]”
(f.5-6)
23>
The repetitive references to More and his work insist on reminding the reader
that More’s island in Utopia was an
ideal monarchy and not a commonwealth: the citizens long for a return to its
original “picture of al happy governments.” The
King of Utopia works precisely because it is so vague; by hindering a
straight-forward interpretation, the paradoxes force the reader to add his own
personal experience so as to create any meaning. The brand Utopia is only a
promise of resolution, a hope for addressing anxieties; it does not need to
offer an actual fix. As Richard Halpern observes, the function of the genre is
to create tension: “the island itself is constructed as the representation of
desires it cannot locate and of which it cannot take account” (149). This in
turn leads the reader to confront and address dangerous revolutionary desires,
locating them inside the text and eventually finding ways to express them in
the real world.
24>
Although The King of Utopia pretends to discuss political ideals in a fictional
context, it concludes by forcing the reader back into reality. The text
switches from paradoxical metaphors to sharp irony as the reader is led away
from the fictional world of Utopia and reminded of the actual author of the
text. The “Postscript from the Translator to the Reader” offers a sarcastic
apology for the bad translation, claiming that although the translator “is not
wel vers’d in the Utopian tongue,” he is nonetheless supposed to be the best reader
of Utopian in England (f.5). Despite their questionable quality as literary
texts, “these letters being of such consequence, [they are] well worthy to be
read by English-men” (ibid.). Once more, the issue of language and
communication is a key element for the genre, as it gives the narrative a
national, English identity. The translator goes as far as suggesting that
Utopia has now been colonized by both the reader and the translator, as it
“learn’d to speake English (by an English quill).” The pamphlet never pretends
to offer an answer to the reader’s frustrations, focusing instead on
highlighting the ways in which England is “broken” and only England’s king and
its citizens can fix it. Because the reader is invited to identify with the
citizens in the letter, he is encouraged to act like them and demand real
change. Manuel and Manuel argue that the Utopian thought became popular during
the Civil War because writers could use it to demand action from others:
“Utopians, often people without political weight or authority, cling to the
hope that men of great power will put into practice and make real the ‘idea’
that they, the superior creators, have invented” (332). This notion applies to
the generic brand as well, since the Utopia in The King of Utopia serves as a point of reference for “symbolic
resolutions” (Holt 58). This is one of the important ways in which, according
to Holt, a brand can be recognized as a cultural icon: it serves to tell a
story that gives voice to, and thus helps placate, social anxiety. The author
of this pamphlet makes use of More’s identity myth of irony, paradox, and
political reform to expose the incoherencies caused by the Civil War.[15]
25>
The author additionally mimics More by supporting the narrative with his own
satirical paratext.[16]
A false errata list, which “the translator and printers amends [sic] for
mistaking,” offers made-up page numbers and critical corrections for a number
of controversial terms:
“page 103. Line 50. For a good
thing read a true subject. Page 883.
Line 75. For Tyranny, read Taxations.
Page 68. Line 15 for Burglary read Plunder,
Page 94. Line 101. For Common-wealth read Committee.
Page 115 for Service read Sacriledge.
Page 40. line 100. For Bishop read Presbyter.
Page 56 line 80 for Pulpit read Tub. Page
37. Line 64 for Preaching read Prating”
(f.5v)
26>
These corrections allow the text to speak more explicitly about the print
agent’s complaints against Parliament by singling out specific groups
(“committees” like the Committee of Examinations, and “Presbyterians,” who
sought to overthrow the Episcopalian bishops and, with them, the king) and
social abuses (like excessive “Taxations” and the “Plundering” of lands from
those who did not support Parliament). While the language of the fictional
letters is cloudy and twisted with metaphors, the printer and the
author/translator (who might well be the same person) stand out as the true
authors of the text.
27>
By calling attention to the errata, the print agents grant textual production a
central role: the peripheral details (the colophon, note from the translator,
errata lists) in fact contain the pamphlet’s true message. Further, by virtue
of being paratextual, these additions can escape the fictional world and speak
directly to the reader. Despite the satirical tone, the pamphlet delivers its
message on the title-page (“England is by th’ English broken”) and in the
closing errata. Citing a number of texts that use errata lists and admissions
of error as symbolic metaphors for the reading process, Michael Saenger points
out that error “is usually used as a means of asking the reader to see beyond
the printed page, and to search for the original that the page strives to
represent” (205). Using the errata to contrast specific, political terms with
their “corrections,” the print agents describe the Civil War and Parliament as
a poorly written text in dire need of correction. The press must call on its
“true subjects,” the middle-class readers by the bookstalls, to correct and
amend the country’s mistakes. The author enacts real-world reform through the
notion of textual reform, using the Utopia brand to emphasize the status of the
text as political intervention. Reinforcing the world-upside-down metaphor, the
imprint claims the pamphlet was first printed in Cosmopolis in “the year 7461”
and then “reprinted at London an. Dom. 1647.”
Utopia is not, then, simply a literary reference to More’s description
of the ideal government, but the memory of a time when England could still
count on a king and his citizens to keep their land and their religion intact.
28>
As a brand generic, The King of Utopia
utilizes the iconic name to attract potential readers and create an immediate
thematic connection (or protocol) for understanding the author’s political
criticism. Although other authors are much less explicit about making use of
their generic Utopia brand, it is possible to see a growing trend among texts:
locating in Utopia the place not for the ideal government, but for idealized,
fair trials. Political critique therefore becomes more specific, tackling
issues of religious persecution and social injustice. In The examination of Tilenus before the Triers; in order to [sic] his intended settlement in the office of a
publick preacher in the commonwealth of Utopia (1658), for instance, Bishop
Laurence Womock takes on the pseudonym Tylenus to narrate a fictional dialogue.
In it, Tylenus is vetted by Triers (such as Dr. Absolute and Dr. Dam-Man) for a
preaching position in Utopia. Womock’s pamphlet aims to criticize a commission
of Triers created during the commonwealth to examine whether appointed
preachers were following sanctioned Calvinist doctrines.[17] By placing
a specific, contemporary event within the island of Utopia and assigning
caricatures to represent the Triers, Womock argues that the questioning process
is absurd and nonsensical. Satire is already an embedded marker of the Utopian
brand, so Womock can use its central narrative to present his arguments against
the Triers and refute the Tenets of the Remonstrants through a traditional
dialogue. In other words, the mention of Utopia automatically brands the text,
so that readers understand the absurdity and irony of the situation, allowing
the rest of Womock’s pamphlet to argue his ideological assertions with
straight-forward rhetoric.
29>
Branding a text with the word “utopia” creates the opportunity for authors to
discuss controversial topics in a now-commonplace fictional safe space, while
still questioning what is “ideal” (and therefore righteous) and investigating
how to recuperate this ideal in the real world. The brand might function as
part of the narrative, as is the case of Womock’s pamphlet, or it might serve
as advertisement to attract more readers. In A Letter Found in Utopia (1675), for example, an anonymous author
praises Peter Sterry’s Discourse of the
Freedom of the Will (1675), arguing for religious acceptance. Although the
work has no mention of Utopia or More in the narrative, the print agent clearly
used the title to make the work attractive and draw in readers interested in
any work with the brand Utopia on its title-page. Here, the brand-name alone is
a sufficient marketing strategy.
30>
Through and after the Civil War, authors continued to brand their works by
using Utopia to create a new kind of
identity myth. The use of the generic brand could serve to represent a “no
place,” or “any place,” as in: Passes
Granted, by the Free-born People of England to severall of the most eminent
perjur’d rebels assembled in Junto at Webminster. Who are now desirous to
transport themselves into New England, to Amsterdam, or Utopia (1648),
which cites parliamentary traitors and condemns them to exile. Similarly, A Copie of the Quaeries, or, A Comment upon
the Life, and Actions of the Great Tyrant and his Complices; OLIVER the first
and last of that name, not unfit, not unworthy of thy perusal (1659)
advertises having been “printed in Utopia,” referencing other queries and
petitions printed against Parliament.[18] The
queries vary from more serious questions like “whether (like that of most
weddings) the first joyfull day of this present Parliament, will not be the
fore-runner of a great many years of sorrowes” (A2), to derisive ones like
“whether Cromwell and Henry [the VIII] when they have compared their notes in
the other world, will not be good company in hell together” (A3v). The print
agent uses the label “printed in Utopia” to brand the petition as political
criticism and remind readers of the real queries and petitions that should be
made against the Commonwealth.
31>
While the Utopia brand can represent stories of righteous judgment, its most
important marker is that it allows citizens to participate actively in public
debates. The authors of The Loyal City of
Bristol, vindicated from Amsterdamnism, or Devil’s Borough (1681) argue at the
start that their pamphlet has a valuable social purpose, stating in the epistle
to the reader that “the description was design’d only to turn the fanatick zeal
here into ridicule” (A2). The only reference to Utopia appears at the heading
of the text, “A Letter from the Bishop of Utopia,” and seems to be a device for
defending the city of Bristol as a just and law-abiding place. Bristol coffee
houses were at the time considered “meeting places of factitious persons, and
centers of false, scandalous news, libels and pamphlets” (Tapsell 109). The
bishop’s letter denies reports that the city is harboring Presbyterians and
supporting religious dissent. In the pamphlet, the anonymous author relates the
persecution and apprehension of dissenters and guarantees that the city itself
is still loyal to the king. Here, the brand-name “utopia” is designed to
attract the reader to purchase a politico-religious tract, placing Utopia as
the location for righteous monarchical support. Like Womock, the authors of
this tract use the brand to avoid having to set up an intricate or misleading
satire. Because the Utopia brand already represents the ironies and paradoxes
of political structures, the author can deliver his message from under the
protection of claiming to speak from Utopia, and not from or against England.
32>
The final and latest example of seventeenth-century Utopia generics deals with this literary paradox by using the
genre’s playfulness to address social flaws inherent to the middle-class
marketplace. This text is worth a closer look because it uses a variety of
strategies discussed above to create an elaborate new narrative. While it seems
to draw the furthest away from More’s original text, this pamphlet attempts to
use the brand’s political and social significance as the starting point for
complaints against middle-class workers. Whether taken seriously or as a
playful reflection on the English marketplace, John Dunton’s reference to Utopia demonstrates that the brand
continued to influence printed texts even before the appearance of Bishop
Gilbert Burnet’s translation in 1684. Thus, what at first glance appears to be
a long, forty-five year gap between Alsop’s second edition and Burnet’s
translation is merely a matter of perspective. The King of Utopia was published less than ten years after Alsop’s
second printing and, broadly speaking, Utopia as cultural brand remained alive
in the print marketplace through political, social, and religious pamphlets throughout
the length of the seventeenth century.
33>
John Dunton’s The Informer’s Doom: or, an Amazing Seasonable Letter from
Utopia, Directed at the Man in the Moon (1683) depicts a mock-trial of
English characters and tradesmen. Dunton uses references to two utopian texts
to advertise his pamphlet: More’s Utopia
and Domingo Gonzalez’s faux-narrative The
Man in the Moon. Although the narrative is supposed to take place on the
Utopian island, Dunton does not disguise the fact that his characters represent
English values: e.g. Conscience the Judge, Mr. Sincerity, and Mr. Protestant.
The Utopian judge indicts a list of personages that Dunton believes to be
“grand and bitter enemies that disturb and molest all kingdoms and states” (as
stated in the title-page), including Pope Innocent XI, Justice Implacable, Mr.
Violence, A Witch, and Sir John Fraud. Because this is Utopia, all the trials
are expected to automatically dispense rightful justice (as Dunton sees it).
Similarly, each character can only earn his final punishment after hearing the
testimony of good citizens, good Christians, and honorable tradesmen. However,
the pamphlet’s accusations expose (perhaps unwittingly) a social paradox: the
“cheats” attributed to each profession are the inevitable results of the
capitalist system.[19]
The problem of reading Dunton’s text is much like that of reading More’s Utopia: how seriously is the reader
expected to take this? In pointing out largely irresolvable problems and an
impossible resolution to dishonest behaviors in the trading and selling of
goods, Dunton (un)intentionally satirizes his own narrative: if one were to
judge every act of dishonesty done in the city, there would be no one left to
serve in the jury.
34>
The most interesting section of the dialogue is the trial of Sir John Fraud,
whose request for a jury demands the appearance and subsequent vetting of a
variety of London workers. Sir Fraud is described as “an upstart, come out of
Italy, begot of Pride [...] a raiser of rents, and enemy to the kingdom, and hast
insinuated [himself] into all trades, estates, and professions” (f.81-2) and
his judgment gives Dunton an excuse to complain about the dishonesty of London
tradesmen, most of whom are not qualified to join the jury due to their own
misdeeds. Most of the “cheats” result from workers attempting to improve their
social standing or their financial profits. The tanner, for instance, is
accused of unbecoming class ambition (“hoping to make the proud Princox your
son the upstart gentleman [...] [and] marry your daughter at the least to an
esquire, that she may, if possible, be a gentlewoman,” f.110); the merchant is
said to undercut the “poor gentlemen” who cannot resell products bought from
the merchant at equal or higher prices; the weavers are accused of cheating
“poor countrey huswives” with poorly constructed knits (f.141) in order to sell
more products. Amongst the few who make it past the judge are higher-born men
(a knight, a gentleman, and an esquire), a priest, as well as professions that
Dunton considers to be non-speculative and therefore cannot lead to excessive
profits or class leverage (the waterman, the grocer, a husbandman, and even a
poet).
35> Unsurprisingly, the printer and the bookseller also get the judge’s seal of
approval, even though the printer scrapes by on a technicality, since “he
cheats the bookseller sometimes in working on half an impression for himself,
when the bookseller hath had his number he is to pay for; but because the
printer only doth thus to those booksellers that he thinks will never pay him,
he shall pass on the jury as an indifferent honest man” (f.125). The
bookseller, on the other hand, is a utopian model “of a gentile profession,” with
“a good report in Utopia” (f.152), who gets accepted as quickly as he is
dismissed from the narrative. Dunton’s praise of the bookseller is surely meant
to reflect on his own character, but it is worth recalling that print is the
only trade in the island Utopia that had been imported from the continent.
Further, in vetting the printer and the bookseller as honest men, Dunton
authorizes the two professionals as honorable citizens and the best sources for
truthful, politically important news, therefore reinforcing printed books as
one of the few marketplace commodities worth the consumer’s trust.
36>
Dunton’s generic Utopia gathers a few of Utopia’s
more abstract markers and turns them into exaggerated caricatures. Taking
advantage of other generic brands’ own reading of Utopia as a place for fair
judgments, he portrays a court where everyone is punished and every tradesman
is a knave for having capitalist instincts. Although Gregory Claeys sees this
kind of adaptation as showing a “concern to bound human desires and ambitions
by institutional restraints aiming at regularity and orderliness rather than a
desire for moral perfection” (xii), there is no question that The Informers Doom is evidence of the
trickle-down effect of the Utopia brand, which by now has been dissociated from
any specific political context and shows no attempts on the part of the print
agents in challenging the reader to face real-life social conflicts. Yet, the
absurdity of the text calls into question the social complaint genre. Without a
certain degree of capitalist enterprise, no professional (especially not
printers or booksellers) would be able to survive, nor would they be able to
compete in an increasingly speculative society. Dunton, in particular, could
not have lived by the model he describes in this pamphlet and still have
managed to print over 200 books (Parks).
37> Utopia came to represent, for modern
readers and consumers, something between the ideal and the possible; a viable
way to discuss ideology and to think of “the possibility of a world upside down
and at the same time to cast a shadow over the legitimacy of an upright world”
(Heilbrunn 104). It is impossible to know now if satire, political argument, or
humanist criticism was More’s primary goal in creating his Utopia. If we are to judge by the moving parts of the first Latin
editions, More and his circle of friends appreciated the text for its playful
structure: add a letter, and you support the fantasy, remove a map and you
highlight the unlikely “no place” that is Utopia.
Similarly, as Utopia moved across
print agents, translators, and markets, the iconic brand emerged as “a magical
device of transformation” (113) in which repetition, familiarity and interpretative
dissonance helped shape a recognizable commodity. The narrative and the framing of Utopia work together to shape the text
as a marketable cultural product, teaching the reader to identify features that
make it at once unique and yet reproducible.
38>
Understanding the printing history of More’s Utopia as part of a cultural branding process allows us to consider
the ways in which More’s narrative (and More himself) became such a cultural
icon in England. Print agents read and interpreted the work to make it appeal
to their unique markets and to respond to timely historical contexts. However,
while doing that, each agent helped define recognizable aspects of the text
that could be repeated, copied, and reproduced in generic form. Considering Utopia as an iconic brand—one which
survives precisely for its ability to tell different stories and create new
identity myths with each historical change—can offer readers and scholars of Thomas
More a new way to understand the multiplicity of narratives contained within
this single book. While it is not likely that the average reader encountered or
even read more than one or two versions of the text, this analysis of brand
generics proves that Utopia was a
culturally pervasive text across social and class divisions. The variety of
pamphlets and tracts making use of the word “utopia” to brand their product is
evidence of this text’s unusual history, filling in the gaps between each
edition of More’s text and the bigger picture of Utopia in the English imagination.
_____
Notes
[1] As Gary Saul
Morson and J. C. Davis discuss, the classical genre can be traced back to
Plato’s Republic, but More’s
revitalization adds new and unique elements to the tradition. While More may
not have invented the political fiction genre, he has been credited with
inventing the word “utopia” that now labels it. Following its initial
popularity, Amy Boesky claims that Utopia
remained unique in the English marketplace: “with the exception of two
dialogues [...] Utopia was not imitated
in England until Francis Bacon wrote New
Atlantis in the 1620s” (11).
[2] This analysis
deliberately avoids texts modeled after More’s narrative structure
(particularly fictional travel narratives), looking instead at cheap-print
works that use Utopia not as a literary form but as a generic reference. Many
faux narratives populated the print marketplace before and after Bacon’s attempt
at replicating More, including Thomas Lupton’s Siuqila Too Good to Be True [...] The Wonderful Manners of the People of
Mauqsun (1584), Francis Goodwin’s groundbreaking science fiction, The Man in the Moon (1638), and Samuel
Harlib’s A Description of the Famous
Kingdom of Macaria (1641). Although these works reproduce (in varying
degrees of quality) the popularity of Utopia by creating satirical travel
narratives, they appear less concerned with political or ideological critique,
a feature many may argue is what sets More’s work apart from previous utopias.
[3] Holt defines
material markers as the brand’s physical identifiers: a name, a logo, and a
unique design (3).
[4] Routh argues that these letters indicate the limited
audience of the original printing: those who would know the aforementioned
authors and take their name as a commendation for the work.
[5] See Terence
Cave, Thomas More’s Utopia in Early Modern Europe: Paratexts and Contexts (2008).
[6] It is possible
that Creede inherited the rights to the edition and did not have to spend much
money to publish it. Nonetheless, his decision to publish a reprint suggests
there was still a market for Utopia even
forty years after Vele.
[7] The Life and Death of Sir Thomas Moore was published in
1631. Given Alsop’s choice of Cresacre More for the dedication, he must have
known of his involvement in the biography. It is possible that this dedication
was also a play for Cresacre’s business or future associations with the More
family.
[8] Of course, Utopia’s narrative is much more complex
and paradoxical, as Manuel and Manuel, Cave, Boesky, et. al have demonstrated.
However, for the purposes of this analysis, I mean to argue that Utopia as an iconic brand entered the
popular imagination as a signifier for political critique, satire, and irony—especially
as it applied to Cromwell’s commonwealth.
[9] See Jack
Goldstone, Revolution and Rebellion in
the Early Modern World (1993); Peter Lawson, “Property Crime and Hard Times
in England 1559-1624” in Law and History
Review 4.1 (1986); and Robert Brenner, Merchants
and Revolution: Commercial Change, Political Conflict, and London’s Overseas
Trade 1550-1653 (2003).
[10] By suggesting
that the island of Utopia represents the ideal commonwealth, the title
indicates that the conflicts presented in Book I will be resolved in Book II. Yet,
the organization and behavior of the Utopians proves to be less than ideal. For
a discussion of the ways in which More sets up this failure both rhetorically
and thematically, see Arthur F. Kinney, “Encomium
Sapientiae: Thomas More and Utopia,”
in Humanist Poetics: Thought, Rhetoric,
and Fiction in Sixteenth-Century England (1986).
[11] Not discussed
here are Richard Chiswell’s 1684 and 1685 editions, which feature a new
translation of the Latin text by bishop Gilbert Burnet. Although they omit the
original paratexts, these editions include a preface from a
religiously-reformed Burnet in hopes to regain favor with the king. Chiswell’s
unadorned, bare-bones reproduction of the popular text suggests that the brand
had by then become a guaranteed sell.
[12] Manuel and
Manuel and Robert Appelbaum have argued that Utopias were mostly used by
Parliamentarians hoping to defend the idea of a commonwealth. Yet, most of the
pamphlets I located and discuss here focus on the royalist appeal of the work
and More’s own reservations against the suggestion that a republic could in
fact work.
[13] For more on the
rhetoric of parenting in early modern literature, see Brooks, Printing and Parenting in Early Modern
England (2005).
[14] The author
hints at the pamphlet’s deliberately bad language in the extended title of the
work, stating the King’s letter is bound with “the citizen’s answer thereunto, translated
out of the Utopian tongue, into broken English.” He asks his reader and
book-buyer rhetorically: “but why Broken English? O Sir! What here’s spoken,
imports that England is by the English broken.” He later returns to this
problem in “The Postcript from the Translator to the Reader.”
[15] Boesky observes
that “by the 1640s in England the term utopia
was increasingly associated with real-life reform” (84). Her analysis
focuses on Utopian texts meant to produce ideal societies that should be
mimicked in real life. Although these kinds of Utopias show “a clear shift from
monarch to the republic as a model utopian government” (90), the pamphlets
making use of the Utopia brand-name nearly all focus on the preservation of
monarchy and traditional values. For other analyses of Utopian texts written
during the Civil War, see “Topsy-Turvy in the English Civil War,” in Utopian Thought in the Western World (2009);
Christopher Hill, The World Turned Upside
Down: Radical Ideas During the English Revolution (1975); Marie Louise
Berneri, Journey Through Utopia
(1950); and George Claeys, Restoration
and Augustan British Utopias (2000).
[16] It is difficult
to know why the false paratexts, which only appear in the earlier versions of Utopia and become less frequent once the
brand is established, would become a distinguishing feature for this generic
version. The author could be more familiar with an edition that contained the
paratexts and felt compelled to add one to his text. In this case, the
self-aware aspect of these additions helped expose the true message of the
text.
[17] For a
commentary on how this text participates in Calvinist Oxthodoxy debates, see
Peter Thuesen, Predestination: The
American Career of a Contentious Doctrine (2009), 75-80.
[18] Bernard Alsop
was among many print agents who were accused of printing seditious pamphlets that
announced fake news from Parliament and fake royalist petitions, most famously
the Hertfordshire petition (1641), which caused him to be sent for by the House
of Commons. He and his partners were later imprisoned in 1643 for printing His Majesty’s Propositions to Sir John
Hotham and the Inhabitants of Hell (Plomer 4).
[19] Dunton
was a wise capitalist himself, using popular stories or literary trends to
boost his publishing career. Michael Mascuch calls him “the maven of
(re)invention [whom] catered to the public’s growing hunger from the start”
(146).
_____
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_____
Andie Silva is Assistant
Professor of English at York College (CUNY) in Jamaica, New York. Her research
and reviews have appeared in History of European Ideas, Early Modern
Literary Studies, and Early Modern Online Bibliography. Her book
project examines early modern print and modern digital cultures, focusing on
paratextual materials as unique sites of labor, cultural capital, and
maker-consumer relationships. She’s also currently working on a database of
non-authorial paratexts.
_____
APPOSITIONS:
Studies in
Renaissance / Early Modern Literature and Culture,
Volume Nine (2016): Texts
& Contexts
_____
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