RT Article
T1 Otherness in More's Utopia
JF Moreana
VO 53
IS 3/4
SP 73
OP 94
A1 Navaud, Guillaume
LA English
PB Edinburgh University Press
YR 2016
UL https://www.ixtheo.de/Record/1575171848
AB Utopia as a concept points towards a world essentially alien to us. Utopia as a work describes this otherness and confronts us with a world whose strangeness might seem disturbing. Utopia and Europe differ in their relationship to what is other (Latin alienus) - that is, that which belongs to someone else, that which is foreign, that which is strange. These two worlds are at odds in regards to their foreign policy and way of life: Utopia aspires to self-sufficiency but remains open to whatever good may arrive from beyond its borders, while the Old World appears alienated by exteriority yet refuses to welcome any kind of otherness. This issue also plays a major part in the reception of More's work. Book I invites the reader to distance himself from a European point of view in order to consider what is culturally strange not as logically absurd but merely as geographically remote. Utopia still makes room for some exoticism, but mostly in its paratexts, and this exoticism needs to be deciphered. All in all, ...
K1 Alien
K1 Exoticism
K1 Foreign
K1 Other
K1 strange
K1 Utopia
DO 10.3366/more.2016.53.3-4.6