Asked by Misha Glenny what Thomas More meant by inventing his imaginary island, the historian points to the woodcut map in the 1518 edition. The island is described as crescent-shaped, but the map looks like a skull, which she reads as a reminder of death in which everyone is equal.
…to their husbands, men are responsible for admonishing their wives, parents for admonishing their children and so on. And so it quickly unravels the governance is male and that women are in this sort of position of, as in sort of 16th century England, being subordinate members of those households.
Okay, so Joanne, in that case, tell us what is Moore's overall intent with this? Why create this fictional island at all?
I think there are a number of reasons, and we've touched on some of them already. And for 500 years, people have been reading so much into this text. It almost what Cathy was describing as the difficulty approaching the island. I think it's the difficulty approaching the meaning of this text as well. But he does, I think, in the sort of definitive version that he produces in 1518, give us a bit of a clue, and that's a map of Utopia, which in fact does not resemble the crescent shape at all that's described. And I think that that really twigs us on to something there, because what it does resemble, and it's produced by Ambrosius Holbein, the elder brother of Hans Holbein the Younger, what it does resemble is a skull. And so it tells us that utopia is a memento mori, a menta mori. It is a reminder, a remembrance of death. And this essential moral or lesson that Moore always comes back to, which is that none of these things that we pride ourselves on in our society, 16th century or 21st, wealth and social standing and property, none of that matters in death. In death, we are all the same. In death, we are all equal. And so utopia, in some ways, is like the afterlife. Everyone is just like their neighbor.
Is it anti-royalist, anti-monarchical? This is a question to any of you. I got the distinct impression that if I were Prince Henry or King Henry VIII, I would be slightly miffed by some of the almost Republican sentiments.
It is Republican.
There's no question about it. Well,