Utopia and European Humanism: the Function of the Prefatory Letters and Verses

Abstract

The letters and verses written for the early editions of Utopia by Sir Thomas More and his fellow humanists have had remarkably little influence on More's critics and in later editions have been reprinted (if at all) more as literary curiosities than as significant contributions to our understanding of the work. Yet the very extent and range of this appended material would suggest that it was meant to play an important rôle. The first edition, printed by Thierry Martens at Louvain in 1516, includes a Utopian quatrain 'translated’ by Peter Giles, the Hexastichon Anemolii or ‘shortc meter of Utopia', verses by Gerhard Noviomagus, Cornelius Grapheus, and John Paludanus, and the letters of Giles to Jerome Busleiden, Busleiden to More, Paludanus to Giles, and More to Giles.