MY UTOPIA PROJECT

Documentation - characterization, Types

Utopia

For thousands of years human beings have dreamt of perfect worlds, worlds free of conflict, hunger and unhappiness. But can these worlds ever exist in reality?

In 1516 Sir Thomas More wrote the first 'Utopia'. He coined the word 'utopia' from the Greek ou-topos meaning 'no place' or 'nowhere'. But this was a pun - the almost identical Greek word eu-topos means a good place. So at the very heart of the word is a vital question: can a perfect world ever be realised?



Think about these questions when you look at the sources...Is utopia possible?Are utopian ideas meant to be acted on?If not, what other purposes do they serve?

Where is utopia?

Some utopias are set outside time - in mythical time, at a time beyond death, before time began, or at a point in the future - unmarked by history

These utopian visions are often pure fantasy and aim to provide escape from everyday reality. Some present a perfect world for comparison with our own, and in doing so highlight the problems of the day.

Those utopias that have been realised have been self-contained model communities, to some degree removed from the mainstream of society. Thus, one might ask:

Is it meant for this world or another?Is it outside time, or set in the past, present or future?Is it accessible or inaccessible to all?



What is utopia made of?

Utopian visions often include versions of the social structures and traditions that exist in the everyday world. In other words, many imagined utopian societies use systems of justice, control, economy, law, custom and belief to support a particular vision or set of ideals.

Perfection: Classical Utopias

We can find the origins of utopian ideas in images of perfection and imagined ideal societies from classical and biblical literature. A tension between the ideal and the real can be felt in all of the sources provided here. Many of these worlds are set outside history in a golden age, before time began or in a mythical time governed by its own rules.

Human nature, social reality and world history are complex and complicated. Are we able to imagine ourselves living in these worlds? What about individual will and desire?

Think about the purpose of these perfect descriptions.

Are they deliberately impossible?Are they meant to be compared with everyday life?What function does fantasy fulfil?

Hesiod, The Five Ages

Hesiod was a Greek poet who lived in the 8th century BC.

In this passage Hesiod uses utopian imagery taken from ancient myth to describe a carefree life of plenty and happiness. The idealised golden age of the past is set against the troubled, present day world.

Ideal communities of mythology often exist outside history, at the beginning of time or beyond death.

is for The story of creation, told in the opening chapter of the Bible, is one of the earliest descriptions of paradise. The image of the Garden of Eden is a powerful one. The creation myth and the Garden of Eden represent the beginning of human time and experience, and therefore can conjure powerful images of a pure time and place, unmarked by history. In common with other early myths, it is set outside time and marks an ideal or Golden Age before things went wrong in the world.

The Genesis myth was set in Mesopotamia. It was written down in c.10 BC by scribes of the 'priestly tradition'. This extract may originally have been part of a chant or chorus sung at the New Year festival in the spring.

Garden of Eden - Genesis

Virgil, The Messianic Eclogue

Virgil was a Roman poet (70-19 BC). Unlike the earlier writers who described the Golden Age as outside time, Virgil's Eclogue suggests that human progress might lead to a more affluent and leisured world in the foreseeable future. His fourth Eclogue, the Messianic Eclogue, is the clearest example of the shift from a timeless to a more historical view of a perfect world.

An eclogue is a 'pastoral' poem that idealises rural life. The term messianic suggests the promise of rescue or relief.

Plato, Republic, perfect forms

Plato was a Greek philosopher who lived between 427 and 347 BC. Plato argues that wisdom based on truth and reason is at the heart of the just person and the just society.

platon state

16th century dreams: Thomas More

Thomas More (1477 - 1535) wrote the first formal utopia. He imagined a complex, self-contained world set on an island, in which communities shared a common culture and way of life.

topıa

The island of Utopia is in the middle just 200 miles broad, and holds almost at the same breadth over a great part of it; but it grows narrower towards both ends. Its figure is not unlike a crescent: between its horns, the sea comes in eleven miles broad, and spreads itself into a great bay, which is environed with land to the compass of about five hundred miles, and is well secured from winds. In this bay there is no great current, the whole coast is, as it were, one continued harbour, which gives all that live in the island great convenience for mutual commerce;

but the entry into the bay, occasioned by rocks on the one hand, and shallows on the other, is very dangerous. In the middle of it there is one single rock which appears above water, and may therefore be easily avoided; and on the top of it there is a tower in which a garri-son is kept the othrocks lie under water, and are very dangerous. The channel is known only to the natives, so that if any stranger should enter into the bay, without one of their pilots, 

he would run great danger of shipwreck; for even they themselves could not pass it safe, if some marks that are on the coast did not direct their way; and if these should be but a little shifted, any fleet that might come against them, how great soever it were, would be certainly lost.