thomas more’s “utopia” in early modern europe: paratexts ... 111205... · thomas more’s...

Elizabeth McCUTCHEON Moreana Vol. 48, 185-186 211-219

Thomas More’s “Utopia” in Early Modern Europe: Paratexts and Contexts. Edited Terence Cave. Manchester U.P.: Manchester and New York, 2008 - xviii +302 pp.

REVIEWER Elizabeth McCutcheon University of Hawaii

Like the texts it is examining, this study of early modern

European paratexts and contexts for More’s Utopia is both enjoyable and fruitful and will long be a useful tool for historians and literary, linguistic, and cultural scholars and critics. It will also be of interest to anyone concerned with reader responses and translation practice and theory. A team project for Dislocations: Practices of Cultural Transfer in the Early Modern Period, based at the University of Oslo, it names fourteen contributors, including the editor, who examine the “materials that surround a given text” (xi), that is, the substantive paratexts, sometimes called the parerga, in over fifty “editions” of Utopia in Latin and six European vernaculars (German, Italian, French, English, Dutch, and Spanish) published or, in one case, in manuscript, between 1516 and 1650. (It should be noted that by “editions” the team includes “successive appearance of the work,” including “straightforward reprints” [xiv].) There are two major parts. Part I, “Versions of Utopia: A European Map,” provides an overview and the political, religious, and cultural contexts for these Latin and vernacular texts. Part II is devoted to the paratexts themselves, given in the original language and in translation in an order paralleling the treatment of the different languages in Part I, with one major exception. Only the dedicatory epistle in the Latin edition published in Milan in 1620 is represented, since other paratexts originally printed in Latin are available elsewhere. Three

212 Moreana Vol. 48, 185-186 Elizabeth McCUTCHEON

one-page tables follow: one traces the variations in the five Latin editions of Utopia that appeared in More’s lifetime: Louvain, 1516; Paris, 1517; Basel, March 1518; Basel, November 1518; and Florence, 1519; the second, variations in sixteenth-century Latin editions that appeared after More’s death in 1535; the third, variations in early seventeenth-century Latin editions. Even though these tables do not represent any vernacular editions, the kind and number of variations, including material that is added, subtracted, and otherwise relocated, are themselves provocative proof of just how mobile a text the Utopia was and is. There is also a bibliography, which is more useful for primary texts than secondary works. For example, R.W. Gibson’s compilation: St. Thomas More: A Preliminary Bibliography of His Works and of Moreana to the Year 1750 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1961), which includes collations of forty-four early editions of Utopia in Latin and the vernacular, is not listed. Finally, there are ten well-chosen illustrations, many of them of title-pages, in addition to illustrations on the front and back cover, which complement the coverage of the book.

Almost half of the book contains Utopia’s paratexts between 1524 and 1643 in the vernacular and in translation into English, and for this reason alone readers will want to have this book in their library. Even today, when so much material is being digitized, many of us are more or less disfranchised by distance or lack of resources, so it is extremely valuable to have these materials available in six vernaculars and in English translation. That they are all under one cover makes them even more helpful for comparative purposes, and will facilitate future study of the culture and history of a well-known and much read and interpreted text. Many of Utopia’s readers will find this section of the book indispensable and want to

Elizabeth McCUTCHEON Moreana Vol. 48, 185-186 213

read it for themselves. For the remainder of this review, then, I will concentrate on Part I.

Vibeke Roggen’s chapter on the twenty Latin editions printed before 1650 (focusing on those between 1516 and 1631 but mentioning subsequent editions as well) emphasizes how, from the very beginning, Utopia was a protean text, distinguished, in part, by its humanist milieu and the influence of Erasmus. Even so, there are striking differences between and among the first five editions, which themselves involved four different editors, four different publishers, four different countries, and telling differences in text and paratexts. Carefully tracing the printing history of these and later editions and the many variations in the paratexts, Roggen concludes that Froben’s editions were the most influential of the earliest ones, while, generally speaking, the Latin Utopia was “more conservative and stable than the vernacular versions” (30). At the same time she notes how local issues affected a particular edition (particularly Milan, 1620), and the impact of larger religious and political developments, so that the Utopia came to be censored. Even the title of the work evolved significantly over the decades; what was initially a long and descriptive title shrank to the name of the island alone, showing how well established “the concept of Utopia” had become and that a new genre had emerged (31).

The history of early German translations of Utopia is a short one, as there were only two, each concentrating on Book II, but otherwise very different, as Trond Kruke Salberg explains in Chapter 2. The first one, by Claude Chansonnette (Claudius Cantiuncula), a leading jurist, was printed in Basel in 1524; the second, by Gregor(ius) Wintermonat, a relatively unknown historian, appeared almost a century later in Leipzig in 1612. Analyzing Chansonnette’s long dedicatory preface to the town


councillors of Basel, and more particularly to one of the city’s two mayors, Salberg suggests that Chansonnette had a specific political purpose in singling out Book II. By emphasizing affinities with Utopia’s society, he wanted to “mobilize the prestige of Basel’s humanist circle” in support of the mayor who represented a group interested in “maintaining strong political authority, civil peace and relative religious tolerance” (37). By contrast, Salberg finds Wintermonat’s intention non-political, and characterizes his translation as a kind of literary journalism or “a culturally prestigious curio from the past” (41). It is also an instance of cross-cultural exchange, and more could have been said about his and his contemporaries’ interest in satiric utopian/dystopian fictions disguised as travel accounts. Wintermonat also translated John Hall’s satiric utopia, Mundus alter et idem, which he could well have known some years before 1612, since it was first published ca 1605, purportedly in Frankfurt, though actually in England, and subsequently printed in Hanau in 1506/07. (See Gibson, St. Thomas More: A Preliminary Bibliography, No. 35 and No. 702; John Millar Wands, trans. and ed., Another World and Yet the Same: Bishop Joseph Hall’s Mundus Alter et Idem [New Haven: Yale University Press, 1981]), p. lii-liii.) And Wintermonat’s translation of Utopia includes only that part of Book I that highlights the notion of a travel narrative, as Salberg notes (45).

In 1548, all of Books I and II of Utopia were published in a vernacular language for the first time. Edited by Anton Francesco Doni and translated into Italian by Ortensio Lando (who was not identified by name until much later), it marks a major recontextualisation from the humanist circle of early sixteenth-century Europe to a different circle, located in Venice, then the printing capital of Europe, which wanted to reach a wider reading


public. As Kristin Gjerpe shows in tantalizing detail, both Doni and Lando responded to the literary and the political dimensions of a text which they appreciated for its satire, its paradoxical form, and its concern for the nature of government. But they transformed the Utopia as well, removing much of the original paratext, yet incorporating the work’s ability to question established truths, its curious mix of the “real” and the fictive, and its way of turning things upside down. She also traces the later history of More’s and other utopian writings in early modern Italy, noting, for example, how Francesco Sansovino included the Doni-Lando translation of Book II at the end of his compilation of different governments, otherwise all actual. Subsequently translated into French, this proved to be a popular work and had a wide influence.

Kirsti Sellevald’s chapter, “The French Translations of Utopia: Christian and Cosmopolitan Models,” covers “two new translations, two retranslations and one revised translation” between 1550 and 1643 (68), when translation was a highly valued intellectual activity. As she points out, these translators played an important part in shaping the reader’s interpretation of the text, and their versions show how “More’s work is successively reinserted into different cultural contexts” (68). The earliest, by Jean Le Blond (Paris, 1550), is characterized both by his interest in language and his use and adaptation of the second Latin edition (1517), itself printed in Paris and the first edition to contain a major letter by the famous French humanist and jurist, Guillaume Budé. Le Blond’s choice of this edition, then, seems singularly important, making his translation consciously French while emphasizing Budé’s Christian moral perspective. Nine years later Barthélemy Aneau reworked Le Blond’s translation; Sellevald argues that, influenced by the intellectual atmosphere of Lyon, he replaced the Christian values of Budé with


Stoic ones. At the same time, she reminds us of how attracted Aneau was by More and his work, drawing upon details from Utopia in describing another utopian city, Orbe, in his chivalric romance, Alector. The issue of real and imaginary states recurs in Gabriel Chappuys’ compilation of different forms of government, which purports to translate Book II of More’s Utopia from Latin but probably relied on Sansovino’s translation. Cross-cultural exchange continued with Sellevald’s last example, Samuel Sorbière’s translation, printed in Amsterdam in 1643 and dedicated to Frederik Magnus, an important figure in the United Provinces as they were emerging. Once again, however, political interests are balanced by the translator’s view of the work as an entertaining fable.

In some ways the story of the English translation is a less complicated one than its various appearances in French, since there was only one English translation of Utopia until 1684. But it proved to be an unusually popular one throughout the sixteenth and earlier seventeenth centuries, and it continues to be republished and read today. Ralph Robinson, who advertised himself as a citizen of London, initially translated it on behalf of a circle of friends, whom Terence Cave characterizes as “people of modest means and education” (89), like him interested in the commonwealth and its well-being. This is not the whole story, though, and Cave shows how the edition was reshaped and repackaged in the different political and cultural moments in which it was published. The first edition (1551) offers a stripped-down version accompanied by More’s first letter to Peter Giles and one new paratext—a letter dedicating the translation to William Cecil (later Lord Burghley), then a secretary to Edward VI. But only five years later, a second edition deletes the letter to Cecil, instead addressing the “gentle reader” and adding other paratextual materials. Cave argues that


these changes reflect the change in regime from the Protestant atmosphere of 1551 to the reign of the Catholic Queen Mary, during which Cecil prudently withdrew from public office. Clearly Robinson had a keen sense of his readership and was alert to shifts in attitudes towards More, who could be viewed more enthusiastically after 1553. The later printing history of this translation likewise reflects changes in the regime; tellingly, though, Cave concludes that “the character of Utopia rather than the religion of its author ... must have been the determining factor in the translation and its dissemination” (101), since Robinson’s translation survived and flourished from one reign to the next. This also reflects the liveliness of his translation; though scorned by some professional scholars, it successfully turned an elite humanist Latin text into a homely English one that reached a broad reading public: Robinson had an excellent ear.

In “The Dutch Translations: Austerity and Pragmatism,” Ronny Spaans and Terence Cave note the importance of the Low Countries in Utopia before analyzing the one translation in Dutch, which first appeared in Antwerp in 1553, was reissued in 1563, and subsequently republished with numerous additions between 1629 and 1634. The translator is unknown, and it “is a practical book, containing useful advice for administrators” (105). This sobriety also characterizes the earlier seventeenth-century editions, but the place of publication has shifted from Antwerp to Hoorn, near Amsterdam. There are other changes, notably translations of paratexts from the Latin editions and a distinctly Calvinist rhetoric in its short preface. The authors also remind us, usefully, to remember the Latin editions published in the Low Countries as well as the questions of national identity facing the northern provinces.


Spanish translations represent only part of a larger concern with More’s Utopia in Spain; as Randi Lise Davenport and Carlos F. Cabanillas Cárdenas point out, Latin editions were not only read in Spain itself but the ideas and practices in Book II affected the actual establishment of some colonies in the New World. Except for its context, humanism as it flourished in the earlier sixteenth century in Spain, little is known about one very early translation – the Gondomar MS – an anonymous manuscript written sometime between 1519 and 1535. The only printed translation, by Jerónimo Antonio de Medinilla y Porres, was published in Córdoba in 1637. Unlike the Gondomar manuscript, it does not translate Book I, and Medinilla, himself a “practical man of government” (114) is mostly interested in Utopia as a “political manual” (116), making significant changes in the chapter on religion to bring it into accord with Roman Catholic practices. Emphasizing More’s work as a model for imitation and as an attack on England and other badly governed republics, Medinilla also used the work as a way to praise himself as an administrator, and added several letters of recommendation from leading figures of the time, important both politically and culturally.

The introduction, by Terence Cave, and the afterword, by Warren Boutcher, offer two valuable overviews of these first seven chapters. Cave begins by looking at the various editions from a chronological perspective, noting the way that editions of the Utopia are clustered around certain key moments, beginning with the earliest editions, printed in humanist centers, followed by mid- sixteenth-century editions in two very different centers: Louvain, where More was seen as a Catholic martyr, and Venice, a major trading and printing center. From this point on, the contexts become increasingly complex and diverse, following “almost bewilderingly different trajectories” (5). Cave also helpfully


generalizes about the ultimate value of the paratexts, observing that they “revert insistently to the conception of Utopia as a heuristic text, a fable that speaks obliquely and disconcertingly about matters of grave import” (11). Subsequently calling it a “resilient’’ text, he concludes by seeing Utopia as “the invention not so much of new contents as of new instruments of thought” (13). Boutcher develops this conception more concretely in his virtuosic treatment of “translation” in the sense of transference, arguing that this is why the paratexts are so important and so worth publishing; in them we can experience and discover how the work became “an inherently mobile object, a package of transportable goods” (131). As he points out, each edition enacts its own version of a knowledge transfer which is in some part the topic of Utopia itself, namely, how to bring the knowledge of what Hythloday “saw” in Utopia to a receptive audience. This is why the paratexts are crucial, so much so that I would argue, in particular, that More’s prefatory letter to Peter Giles, which dramatizes this question of how, when, and even whether to effect a knowledge transfer, is actually an essential part of the larger Utopian experience, curiously collapsing otherwise useful distinctions between text and paratext(s) as it reflects upon reader responses. Elizabeth McCutcheon Professor Emerita, University of Hawaii, Manoa [email protected]

mailto:[email protected]�

thomas more’s “utopia” in early modern europe: paratexts ... 111205... · thomas more’s...

Documents