Glossopoesis in Thomas More’s Utopia: Beyond a representation of foreignness

Abstract

Abstract This paper demonstrates the premise that the Utopian language created for the narrative is more than something that only gives the impression of foreignness to the invented nation of Utopia, a mere representation of an outside culture. It is rather a semiotic system devised by the author specifically with the goal of transmitting a message. As such it is indispensable to a fuller understanding of More’s work, and therefore worthy of proper investigation. Consequently, the paper analyses the occurrences of the invented language throughout the author’s text and out of it, in Peter Giles’s writings, word by word, tracing the probable etymologies and meanings, comparing cognate or correlated words in other languages, while conciliating the use of the glossopoeia with the presumptions of semiotics. Some theorists and commentators contribute considerably to the present discussion: Culler (1981. The pursuit of signs. London: Routledge, Romm), James (1991. More’s strategy of naming in the Utopia. Sixteenth Century Journal 22(2). 173–183), Sacks (1999. Introduction to Thomas More’s Utopia. In Utopia. Boston: Bedford/St Martin’s), as well as More’s and Peter Giles’s own elicitations. The result of such reflections is a theory on the critique of the names and the artificial words coined by Thomas More.