There is also a clue that the Island or the descriptions are more than real. The singular effort of this exercise, along with what More was to assert, Raphael Hythloday was a real person. This latter letter was sent while sending the manuscript of Utopia to him for publication with a glowing praise for More and his work, starting “Thomas More, the singular ornament of this our age…” He said More’s Utopia far excel Plato’s Republic. “Wherefore I most earnestly desire you, friend Peter, to talk with Hythloday, if you can, face to face, or else to write your letters to him, and so to work on this matter that in this my book there may neither anything be found which is untrue, neither anything be lacking which is true.”įor the above letter, Giles didn’t directly reply to More, but for many of More’s questions he answered in his letter to Jerome Busleyden dated 1 November 1516. In the case of Ceylon, in fact Catholicism had already begun by the time of 1516 after the arrival of the Portuguese initially in 1505 or 1501. And in the case of the latter the purpose is partly to go there because “he may further and increase our religion, which in there already luckily began.” The last statement is important. This he says is also important because there are some men, including a professor of divinity, who wish to visit Utopia. “For neither we remembered to inquire of him, nor he to tell us, in what part of that new world Utopia situate…as well for that I am ashamed to be ignorant in what sea that Island standeth, whereof I write so long a treatise…” Then he refers to a more important matter for verification and he doesn’t know through whose fault this has happened “whether through mine, or yours, or Raphael’s.” Now this is a matter that More was asking in his letter to Peter Giles to recollect himself or verify from Hythloday directly as if Hythloday is a real person possibly hanging around Antwerp even by this time. He has said “that two hundred of those paces must be plucked away, for that the river containeth there not above three hundred paces in breadth.” More had thought that Hythloday said “the bridge of Amaurote, which goeth over the river Anyder, is five hundred paces, that is to say, half a mile in length.” But Clement has disagreed. There had been a controversy between More and ‘his boy,’ John Clement, about some details regarding the island of Utopia. More pertinent to our query here is what is revealed about Hythloday, Utopia and its location. He has spoken “no word of sleep, neither yet of meat.” He claims, “I therefore do win and get only that time which I steel from sleep and meat.” He was so occupied in the house, after coming back from work. There is congruence and harmony between what he believed in private life and what he discoursed in Utopia through a real or an imaginary island. Moreover, it is also a vindication of what he says about the family life in the island of Utopia. It is undoubtedly an interesting letter which gives a humane flair to the whole work of Utopia. Apart from his heavy official work as a lawyer and a judge and many more, he says, “For when I come home, I must communicate with my wife, chat with my children, and talk with my servants.” These are necessary things that one has to do at home or otherwise, “a man will be a stranger in his own house.” Then what delayed the sending of the ‘Booke’ was his other work. He admits that there was no cause for the delay as Master Raphael has rather eloquently related the story of Utopia and the preceding discourses in Greek and what he had only to do was to write them in simple and straightforward Latin. “I am almost shamed, right well-beloved Peter Giles, to send this book of the Utopian commonwealth, well-nigh after a year’s space, which I am sure you looked for within a month and a half.” That is why we should take his clues and hints seriously. In the last letter, ostensibly referring to a critic, that ‘some of the details of the Island are absurdities,’ More says, ‘if he were adding fiction to reality, then he would have given clues for the scholars to find the truth about the Island and its details.’ There he was actually meaning the opposite, as he has been doing in many occasions throughout the book. The text of Utopia published by Wordsworth Classics of World Literature (1997) gives those interesting letters. If any reader wishes to go through the original letters, they are undoubtedly humorous and enjoyable reading. Otherwise, this chapter does not present any details about his ‘treatise’ on Utopia. The importance of this chapter is its link to the main argument of the book, “ Thomas More’s Socialist Utopia and Ceylon (Sri Lanka),” and the concluding chapter summing up and expanding on the main argument. This short chapter is about three letters which were included in the initial publications of Thomas More’s Utopia as Preface.
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