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Periodical article | Leiden University catalogue | WorldCat |
Title: | The Ethiopian root of Thomas More's 'Utopia' |
Author: | Debele, Meskerem L. |
Year: | 2016 |
Periodical: | International Journal of African Renaissance Studies (ISSN 1753-7274) |
Volume: | 11 |
Issue: | 1 |
Pages: | 22-33 |
Language: | English |
Geographic terms: | Ethiopia Great Britain |
Subjects: | novels Christianity literary criticism |
About person: | Thomas More (1478-1535) |
External link: | https://doi.org/10.1080/18186874.2016.1212461 |
Abstract: | The classical utopian novels of early-modern Europe, such as 'Utopia', 'Christianopolis' and 'City of the sun', are widely understood in mainstream academics as products of the writers' inventive imaginations of better social organisations. Suggestions regarding the possibility that places with the social and administrative features depicted in the novels might actually have existed in medieval times, are often dismissed by Western scholars who argue that the role of non-European civilisations in the early-modern proliferation of utopian novels did not go beyond helping to inspire the writers' creative mix of narrations. A disregard for the fact that medieval utopian novels could be modified and/or de-identified versions of earlier reports about 12th- and 13th-century Ethiopians ('the Land of Prester John') has severely distorted the mainstream understanding of utopianism and renaissance by African scholars. This article specifically focuses on More's 'Utopia', to assert its Ethiopian root using historical and religious evidence. Bibliogr., notes, ref., sum. [Journal abstract] |