![]() In the 1510s, Erasmus nearly broke himself over his new edition of the Greek New Testament and his endless exertions to find audiences to appreciate this labor, a task which essentially involved finding readers of ancient Greek. In 1509, Erasmus published his Encomium Moriae, a work explicitly indebted to Lucian. In 1506, More and Erasmus had published a set of translations of some of Lucian’s dialogues. Most interpreters of More have refused to countenance the full significance of More’s characterization of his narrator and so have failed to recognize that More’s aesthetic decision to complicate his work in this way signals the definite context to which Utopia belongs: the renewal or revival of the study of ancient Greek language and culture in the northern countries, a movement which Erasmus and More were orchestrating at the time of Utopia’s publication in large part through their efforts to popularize the work of Lucian of Samosata. If More’s aim, as most assume, was to design an ideal commonwealth in the tradition of Plato, why did he complicate his work by telling most of it through the mouth of a man like Raphael Hythlodaeus and as if it were a true account? Why not follow Plato’s model, bringing into being an openly fictional commonwealth through a trustworthy narrator? If Hythlodaeus’ account of the island of Utopia is the main thing, then why does More keep calling the reader’s attention to Hythlodaeus himself? My argument is that sorting out why More created such a demanding narrator ends in an understanding of what More sought to achieve through Utopia, not so much what he meant by it. I make the case that Hythlodaeus, not his island, is the central conundrum of Utopia and that understanding why More characterizes him so ambiguously is the best way to understand what More seeks to accomplish in Utopia. When one opens Utopia one finds, before anything else, the provocative, perplexing persona of Raphael Hythlodaeus. Building on what is learned in this investigation, I turn to More’s most enigmatic communication of all, Utopia. To suggest the peculiar complexities one encounters when reading More, I begin with an investigation of an anecdote which relates More’s quasi-legendary mode of communicating and work through the various ways one might seek to understand the anecdote itself and the meaning of More’s statement within it. Both the historical person and the literary works of Thomas More are notoriously challenging to interpret, not the least because More himself so frequently hides his intentions and communicates in knowingly ironic and enigmatic ways.
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