Presentation for fiction unit in ENGL 213.

1. Sir Thomas More’s Utopia
Knights Who Say Ni:
Will Rabon
Chris Wright
TJ Burrell
Erika Hubbard

2. What does Utopia mean?
● Sir Thomas More was the first to coin the word
● Greek translation- “no place”
● Sounds like “good place” in Greek

3. SATIRE
“the use of humor, irony, exaggeration, or ridicule to expose
and criticize people's ignorance, particularly in the context of
politics and other recent topical issues.”
*Utopia is indirectly criticizing Europe’s political corruption
and religious hypocrisy of that time. More depicts an
alternative where he is able to expose all of the absurdities and
crookedness of his world.

4. Plot
● Conflict:
○ Zealous Christians were exiled
● Protestant Reformation:
○ Christians were persecuted
○ Sir Thomas More imagined a world that embodied religious
tolerance
○ Making fun of Europe’s ignorance

5. The Narrator
● Sir Thomas More was the first person narrator in the first book,
but in the second he uses one of his developed characters,
Raphael Hythloday as the first person narrator
● Raphael
○ Archangel, brings good news
○ Meaning “God Heals”
● Hythloday
○ “expert of nonsense”
● Also, the original text was written in Latin - the language of the
educated people. This text wasn’t written for the average man.

6. Setting
● Peaceful Island filled with cities all with different
religious differences
○ completely enclosed with water, away from corruption and greed
● Based off of Thomas More’s interpretation of Europe at
the time

7. Character Analysis
● The narrator walks the reader through Utopia.
● He touches on multiple characters and their community
roles
● However, there was not much development-at least in the
chapter we chose-

8. List of Characters
● King Utopus-In a perfect community, there should be no
king
● Priest-Women were allowed to be priests (not even a
thought at the time Utopia was written), The priests had
the most desirable wives (priests were not supposed to
marry)
● Rich-Evil men, they made the laws (What happened to
the idea of a “good place”?)
● Poor-In Utopia, there shouldn’t be a rich or a poor group.
There should be uniformity/equality.

9. Symbols wrapped around satire
● Religion
○ Tolerance
○ No uniformity
○ Personal Beliefs
● Social Classes
○ Priesthood
○ Social Gaps, rich vs poor
○ Built-in Hierarchy
● The Law

10. http://dadahyena.deviantart.com/art/Monty-Python-and-the-Holy-Grail-print-367832089
Here is an example of a
more modern satire, and it
follows along with the theme
of european satirical works.

12. Thanks...and GO TIGERS!