Utopia Refracted through Mandarin Lenses - Univerzita Karlova

$: Utopia Refracted through Mandarin Lenses - Univerzita Karlova$
Univerzita Karlova | Charles University

Universidade do Porto | University of Porto

Filozofická fakulta | Faculty of Arts (Prague)

Faculdade de Letras | Faculty of Arts and Humanities (Porto)

Ú stav anglofonních literatur a kultur | Department of Anglophone Literatures

and Cultures (Prague)

Centre for English, Translation and Anglo-Portuguese Studies (Porto)

TEXT AND EVENT IN EARLY MODERN EUROPE (TEEME)

An Erasmus Mundus Joint Doctorate

PHD DISSERTATION

Utopia Refracted through Mandarin Lenses:

Translations, Paratexts, Afterlives

Yi-Chun Liu

Supervisors:

Professor Martin Procházka (Charles University)

Professor Fátima Vieira (University of Porto)

2020

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Declaration of Academic Integrity

I declare to have written this thesis completely by myself and to have used only sources

declared and referenced in the text. The thesis was not used to achieve the same or

different academic title at academic institutions other than Charles University and

University of Porto.

Prohlašuji, že jsem dizertační práci napsala samostatně s využitím pouze uvedených a řádně

citovaných pramenů a literatury a že práce nebyla využita v rámci jiného vysokoškolského

studia či k získání jiného nebo stejného titulu.

Yi-Chun Liu

2 Feburary 2020

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

Abstract …………………………………………………………………………… 6

Abstrakt …………………………………………………………………………… 8

Resumo ……………………………………………………………………………… 9

Notes on Terminology ……………………………………………………………. 11

Introduction ………………………………………………………………………. 12

1. Commemoration of Utopia: Textual Afterlives and Beyond …………. 16

2. Definitions of Utopia …………………………………………………… 20

3. Readings of Utopia …………………………………………………...…. 25

4. Chinese and Taiwanese Receptions of Utopia ………………………...…. 27

5. Methodologies ………………………………………………………... 32

5.1 Conceptualising Paratext ……………………………………...… 32

5.2 Refraction via Cultural Translation and Paratranslation ……. 36

6. Dissertation Structure …………………………………………….……. 38

Chapter One. Contextualising Utopia: Publication History and Rhetoric ……. 41

1. Publication History of the Early Editions ………………………………. 41

1.1 Early Modern Latin Editions, 1516-1519 ………………………. 42

1.2 Ralph Robinson’s English Translations, 1551 and 1556 …………. 45

2. Renaissance Rhetoric ……………………………………………………. 47

3. Modes of Narrative ……………………………………………………. 50

3.1 Fiction in Utopia …………………………………………………. 52

3.2 Dialogue in Utopia ………………………………………………. 56

4. More’s Self-Fashioning in Utopia ………………………………………… 58

5. Concluding Remarks ……………………………………………………. 61

Chapter Two. Articulating Utopia in Chinese: Introduction and Archetypes …. 63

1. The Introduction of the Concept of “Utopia” …………………………. 63

2. Chinese Counterparts: Political and Pastoral ……………………………. 71

2.1 Da Tong: A Political Utopia ……………………………………… 71

2.2 Peach Blossom Spring: A Pastoral Utopia ………………………. 75


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Chapter Three. Translating Utopia: Towards a Mandarin Ethos ………………. 81

1. Introduction to the Mandarin Editions: Styles and Material Presentation … 81

1.1 Liu Linsheng’s Utopia (1935) ……………………………………. 83

1.2 Dai Liuling’s Utopia (1956, 1982, 1997) ………………………. 88

1.3 Liu Chengshao’s Utopia (1957) …………………………………… 92

1.4 Guo Xiangzhang’s Utopia (1966) …………………………………. 97

1.5 Liu Lihua’s Utopia (1978) ………………………………………… 100

1.6 Song Meihua’s Utopia (2003) …………………………………… 102

1.7 Wu Lei’s Utopia (2005) ………………………………………… 103

1.8 Wang Jin’s Utopia (2007) …………………………………………. 105

1.9 Hu Fengfei’s Utopia (2007 & 2012) ………………………………. 107

1.10 Tang Yi’s Utopia (2011) ………………………………………… 109

1.11 Sun Pinghua and He Shan’s Utopia (2013) ……………………… 110

1.12 Li Lingyan’s Utopia (2016) ……………………………………… 112

2. Decoding More’s Nomenclature: Lost in Transliteration …………………. 115

2.1 Raphael Hythloday ………………………………………………. 117

2.2 Princeps Utopus ……………………………………………………. 123

2.3 Official Titles: Syphogrant, Tranibor, Phylarch, Protophylarch …… 127

2.4 Ethnological Names ……………………………………………… 131

3. Peroration: “Rather Wish Than Hope” ………………………………… 135

4. Concluding Remarks …………………………………………………… 140

Chapter Four. Framing Utopia: More’s Paratexts in Mandarin …………………. 144

1. Authorial Paratexts of the March 1518 Edition ……………………… 145

2. Serio Ludere ………………………………………………………………. 146

3. Notes on Authorial Paratexts ……………………………………………. 152

3.1 A Note on Erasmus’s Epistle to Froben………………………. 152

3.2 A Note on Budé’s Epistle to Lupset ……………………………. 153

3.3 A Note on Utopia’s Epigrams ……………………………………. 161

3.4 A Note on Giles’s Epistle to Busleyden ………………………. 165

3.5 A Note on Busleyden’s Epistle to More ………………………… 167

3.6 A Note on More’s First Prefatory Epistle to Giles ……………… 168

3.7 A Note on More’s Second Epistle to Giles ……………………… 172

4. Paratextual Afterlives: Allographic Prefaces ……………………………… 175

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5. Visual Afterlives: Iconic Paratexts ………………………………………. 179

5.1 Book Covers ……………………………………………………. 179

5.2 Illustrations ……………………………………………………… 182


Conclusion: Utopia’s Recent Afterlives ………………………………………… 188

1. Textual Afterlives ……………………………………………………… 189

2. Academic Afterlives …………………………………………………… 192

3. Artistic Afterlives ……………………………………………………… 194

4. Conceptual Afterlives ……………………………………………………. 195

References …………………………………………………………………………. 199

English Primary Texts ………………………………………………………. 199

Mandarin Primary Texts …………………………………………………. 199

English Secondary Sources ………………………………………………… 200

Mandarin Secondary Sources ………………………………………………… 210

PhD Dissertations: China …………………………………………………… 213

PhD Dissertations: Taiwan ………………………………………………. 213

MA Theses: China …………………………………………………………. 214

MA Theses: Taiwan …………………………………………………………. 215

Works Published in China, 2016-2018 ………………………………………. 217

Works Published in Taiwan, 2016-2018 ……………………………………. 219

Online Sources ……………………………………………………………… 220

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ABSTRACT

This dissertation, entitled Utopia Refracted through Mandarin Lenses, examines the legacy of

Thomas More’s Utopia (1516) in three aspects: translations, paratexts, and afterlives. It

explores how Utopia – as a book and as a construct – has been appropriated into the

Mandarin context during the process of linguistic and cultural transfer in the acts of

translation. Employing close reading, instrumental case study, and the concept of paratexts

to survey fourteen standalone Mandarin translations of Utopia, this study aims to fill in the

gap of a previously neglected aspect of utopian studies, especially its paratextual apparatus,

which has been almost entirely overlooked (with only one exception in 2003) since its first

translation in 1935.

This dissertation is structured into four chapters: the first chapter contextualises

Utopia in the original Renaissance context by providing its early publication history (Latin

and English) and by analysing the modes of narrative – fiction and dialogue – in which

More’s self-fashioning is manifest and where his hypothetical heterocosm is materialised.

All this substantiates how fiction, dialogue, and paratexts are integral to the shaping of

Utopia, without which a holistic reading is not feasible. The second chapter examines the

introduction of the concept of “utopia”, the first rendering of the title as wu tu bang, and

the two Chinese counterparts, a political Great Unity and a pastoral Peach Blossom Spring, with

the aim of uncovering the initial refraction through which Utopia was exposed to the

Mandarin-speaking readership.

Chapter Three considers the fourteen standalone Mandarin translations. It discusses

their stylistic features, material presentations, and translational peculiarities. By singling out

certain noted variances from the original, it is suggested that the Mandarin readers of those

specific editions have read an adapted Utopia that has created its own version of wu tuo bang

than More had intended. A further comparison also shows that translations as well as

publications touching upon Utopia that have been produced in China and Taiwan have, to a

certain degree, reflected upon the respective political tolerance of these two nations.

Acknowledging the bifocal significance of serio-jocularity that runs throughout

More’s Utopia, Chapter Four investigates the framing of Utopia, namely, the authorial

paratexts (1516-18) and the contemporary Mandarin paratexts. While identifying them as

part of Utopia’s afterlives, this chapter argues that the lost, reproduced, and added

paratextual components have packaged Utopia in a creatively semi-novel fashion, evincing

that fidelity should no longer be the sole criterion to be factored in when examining a work

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as transcendental as Utopia. Delving into Utopia’s recent afterlives, the concluding chapter

can be read as an independent survey. It perceives those afterlives in four facets: textual,

academic, artistic, and conceptual, while making evident that the utopian impulse goes

beyond the groves of academe and is the catalyst that raises people’s awareness to

challenge the unjust and to drive them forward.

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ABSTRAKT

Doktorská disertace s názvem Utopie prizmaty čínské kultury (Utopia Refracted through

Mandarin Lenses) se zabývá třemi aspekty čínské recepce Utopie Thomase Mora (1516) –

překlady, paratexty a díly, které Moreova kniha inspirovala. Zkoumá, jak byla Utopie jako

dílo i pojem v čínském kulturním kontextu přijímána prostřednictvím jazykových i

kulturních překladů. K osvětlení tohoto procesu používá interpretace textů a případových

studií. Ke 14 samostatným čínským překladům Utopie přistupuje jako ke specifickým

paratextům a soustřeďuje se také na další paratexty, které byly od prvního čínského

překladu Utopie v roce 1935 až na jednu výjimku (ve vydání z roku 2003) přehlíženy.

Disertace má 4 kapitoly. První zasazuje Utopii do renesančního kontextu a zachycuje

historii jejích jednotlivých vydání v latině i angličtině. Analyzuje dialogickou formu

Moreova vyprávění i jeho pojetí fikce, které dokumentuje utváření Moreovy subjektivity i

jeho hypotetického heterokosmu. Vše to dokazuje, jak se na utváření Utopie podílejí fikce,

dialog a jednotlivé paratexty, bez jejichž znalosti nelze dílo celistvě interpretovat.

Druhá kapitola zkoumá uvedení pojmu „utopie“ do čínské kultury překladem názvu

Moreovy knihy jako Wu tuo bang. Zabývá se také dvěma protějšky utopie v čínské kultuře –

politickým spisem Velká jednota a pastorálou Jaro broskvových květů, aby ukázala na odlišnosti

kulturního kontextu, v němž bylo Moreovo dílo přijímáno.

Třetí kapitola se zaměřuje na styl, překladové zvláštnosti a knižní prezentace 14

samostatných čínských překladů Utopie. Soustřeďuje se na jejich zjevné odlišnosti od

originálu a ukazuje, že tato vydání byla adaptacemi, které vytvořily vlastní wu tuo bang,

odlišnou od Moreovy utopie. Další srovnávání pak ukazuje, že překlady a publikace týkající

se Moreovy Utopie, které vznikly v Číně a na Taiwanu, odrážejí do jisté míry i politickou

atmosféru v těchto státech.

Čtvrtá kapitola potvrzuje, že rámcem Moreovy Utopie je směs vážnosti a komiky, která

je typická pro autorské paratexty z let 1516-18, ale také některé čínské paratexty. Některé

z naposledy zmíněných se dají označit za díla, která na Utopii navazují. Ztracené, znovu

vytvořené a přidané paratexty dávají Utopii částečně nový vzhled a ukazují, že věrnost

originálu nemůže být jediným hlediskem při zkoumání recepce tohoto nadčasového díla.

Závěrečná kapitola je pak samostatným přehledem zkoumajícím čtyři druhy nedávných děl,

která na Utopii navazují – informativní texty, vědecká, umělecká a konceptuální díla.

Ukazuje se, že utopický impuls překročil hranice univerzitního prostředí a začal probouzet

lidi k tomu, aby se postavili bezpráví a postupovali vpřed.

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RESUMO

Esta dissertação, intitulada Utopia refractada através das lentes do mandarim, analisa o legado da

Utopia de Thomas More (1516) em três aspectos: traduções, paratextos e "vidas

posteriores". Explora a forma como a Utopia – enquanto livro e enquanto constructo – foi

apropriada e adaptada ao contexto do mandarim durante o processo de transferência

linguística e cultural no processo de tradução. Recorrendo a estratégias de close reading e de

estudo de caso instrumental, bem como ao conceito de paratexto, para analisar catorze

traduções da utopia em mandarim, este estudo visa preencher a lacuna de um aspecto

anteriormente negligenciado na área Estudos sobre a Utopia, o do aparato paratextual,

quase totalmente negligenciado (com apenas uma exceção, em 2003) desde a primeira

tradução para mandarim, em 1935.

Esta dissertação encontra-se estruturada em quatro capítulos: o primeiro capítulo

contextualiza a Utopia no contexto original do Renascimento, oferecendo a sua história de

publicação inicial (em latim e em inglês) e analisando os modos da narrativa – ficção e

diálogo – através dos quais More se apresenta e onde o seu hipotético heterocosmo se

materializa. Tudo isso confirma a ficção, o diálogo e os paratextos como parte integrante

da formação da utopia, sem os quais uma leitura holística não é viável. O segundo capítulo

versa sobre a introdução do conceito de "utopia", a primeira tradução do título como wu tu

bang, e os dois contrapontos chineses, o texto político Grande Unidade e o texto pastoril A

Fonte de Flores de Pêssego, procurando deste modo desvelar a refração inicial através da qual a

Utopia foi exposta aos leitores falantes de mandarim.

O terceiro capítulo concentra-se nas quatorze traduções de Utopia para mandarim.

Discute as suas características estilísticas, apresentação de materiais e peculiaridades de

tradução. Pelo destaque de algumas variações observadas em relação ao original, sugere-se

que os leitores de mandarim dessas edições específicas leram uma utopia adaptada, que

criou uma versão do wu tuo bang distinta da Utopia inicialmente apresentada por More. Uma

comparação adicional mostra ainda que as traduções e publicações sobre o tema da utopia,

produzidas na China e em Taiwan, têm vindo a refletir, até certo ponto, a respectiva

tolerância política dessas duas nações.

Reconhecendo o significado bifocal da sério-jocosidade que perpassa a utopia de

More, o quarto capítulo investiga o enquadramento da Utopia, a saber, os paratextos

autorais (1516-18) e os paratextos mandarins contemporâneos. Ao identificá-los como

parte das "vidas posteriores" da Utopia, este capítulo argumenta que os elementos

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paratextuais perdidos, reproduzidos e adicionados conferiram à Utopia, de forma criativa, as

roupagens de um quase-romance, evidenciando que a fidelidade não deverá ser o único

critério a ser levado em consideração quando se estuda um trabalho tão transcendental

quanto a Utopia. Investigando as "vidas posteriores" da Utopia mais recentes, o capítulo

final pode ser lido como um estudo independente. Analisa essas vidas posteriores em

quatro facetas – textual, académica, artística e conceptual –, ao mesmo tempo que

evidencia que o impulso utópico vai para além do campo académico e é o catalisador que

sensibiliza os indivíduos para a necessidade de desafiarem o que é injusto, incentivando-os

a avançar.

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NOTES ON THE TEXT

The convention of spelling out the Mandarin names I adopt in this research is

pinyin. I do not insert the intonation marks for ease of reading and for consistency with

other sources such as news articles. The presentation of the names will be displayed in the

order as they are spoken in Mandarin: surname comes first, followed by given name,

without a comma in between, as standardised in Anglophone spelling.

The English text of Utopia I adopt in this thesis is from the Cambridge 1995

edition.1 For analysis or commentary from this edition, “Cambridge Utopia (1995)” will be

indicated in footnotes; whereas if words or passages from Utopia are quoted, the page

number will be given in parenthesis after the quotation in the main text.

All translations from Mandarin to English are mine, unless otherwise specified.

1 Utopia: Latin Text and English Translation, eds George M. Logan, Robert M. Adams, and Clarence H. Miller (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995).

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INTRODUCTION

In 2013, Nan Fangshuo, a Taiwanese poet, published a magazine article entitled “Utopia

Teaches You How to Rule a Country”.2 Nan proposed what the Taiwanese president was in

dire need of in terms of ruling a country: disregarding self-interest and leading with virtue.

In Nan’s view, Utopia would teach the president selflessness and the necessity to be guided

by virtue. Nan did not mention the communal gist or the abolition of private property,

though, which are the most patent features of the political system described in Utopia; in

fact, the closest thing he brought up was that Utopians shared a high level of equality. In

the same year, Chinese scholar Gao Fang published “Also on Utopia” in one of the

Communist Party’s newspapers, Enlightenment Daily. 3 The article, which was widely

disseminated through a variety of platforms, chronicled the inclusion of More’s Utopia in

the history of socialist thought written in Mandarin. The last two lines in the article

deserve to be quoted in full: “Let me reiterate here: Utopia was published in late October,

1516. Our nation [the People’s Republic of China] has just recently begun to

commemorate the 500th anniversary of socialism, and the publication of Utopia marks the

formation of socialist thinking”4

These two articles appear to me as a fairly humorous comparison. On the one hand,

the Taiwan piece quotes Utopia to ridicule the then President Ma Ying-Jeou, who had been

in office since 2008.5 The second piece, in contrast, equates the history of Utopia with the

2 Nan, Fang Shuo 南方朔, “<wu tuo bang> jiao ni ru he zhi guo” <烏托邦>教你如何治國

[“Utopia” Teaches You How to Rule a Country]. Tianxia Zazhi 天下雜誌 16 Oct 2013

<https://www.cw.com.tw/article/article.action?id=5052998> 24 March 2017. Nan Fang Shuo is the pen name of Wang Xing-Qing. 3 Gao, Fang 高放, “ye shuo ‘wu tuo bang’” 也說“烏托邦” [Also on Utopia], Guangming Ribao光明

日報 [Enlightenment Daily] 27 June 2013 <http://epaper.gmw.cn/gmrb/html/2013-

06/27/nw.D110000gmrb_20130627_3-12.htm> 10 Oct 2013. Hereafter “Also on Utopia”. The official English name for Guanming Ribao is Enlightenment Daily. It belongs to the Publicity Department of the Communist Party of China. Gao Fang is Professor of International Relations at Renmin University, who has a column in News of the Communist Party of China, a branch of People Daily, the official newspaper of the Chinese Communist Party. 4 The original reads: “我在这里再补充说明一点: <乌托邦>名著出版于 1516年 10 月下旬，

我国最近开始纪念社会主义 500 年，即以此书的出版作为社会主义思想形成的标志。”. 5 Ma finished his term of office in 2016. One of Ma’s policies was to maintain cross-strait peace with China, by keeping the status quo of “no unification, no independence, no martialism”. However, his overt favouritism has provoked criticism surrounding “dwarfing sovereignty” and the suspicion of the “selling of Taiwan”. One notable example was when Ma and the ruling party Nationalist Party, also known as KMT (Kuomintang), recklessly passed the Cross-Strait Service Trade

https://www.cw.com.tw/article/article.action?id=5052998

http://epaper.gmw.cn/gmrb/html/2013-06/27/nw.D110000gmrb_20130627_3-12.htm


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history of socialism, very much in the same way as the Russian Communist Party, following

Lenin’s suggestion, inscribed Thomas More’s name on the monument erected in 1918 in

the Aleksandrovsky Garden, near the Kremlin, to pay homage to the leading thinkers “who

promoted the liberation of humankind from oppression, arbitrariness, and exploitation”.6

In 2017, Gao Fang published another article in an academic journal about the

translation and publication history of Utopia in Chinese over the past one hundred years.7

Although Gao does provide an informative overview of the translation history, his

understanding of Utopia leans toward the ideological – and nationalistic – aspects,

especially in his three-page-long concluding remarks in which he praises China to be

leading the world to achieve “Worldutopia”.8 Gao does not conceal that he values Utopia

above all because of its political message. In his view, More was at the very beginning of a

process that, supplemented with Marx and Engels’s scientific socialism, opened up the way

to a socialism with “Chinese traits”, to be followed by a “World Socialism”.9 Once China

becomes “a prosperous, democratic, civilised, and harmonious socialist modern country”,

Gao writes, a “Chintopia” (China + utopia) will be created.10 With Gao, an Emeritus

Professor at the Renmin University of China (the first university established by the Chinese

Communist Party, in 1941), as well as a high-ranking member of the Party, we have a

superb example of how Utopia has been appropriated to serve the Chinese political agenda.

The articles mentioned previously, however, evince the fact that, five hundred years

after its publication, Utopia is still a workable reference for both the Taiwanese and the

Chinese, but to different ends. In the three cases brought up here, Utopia serves in Taiwan

as a vehicle of criticism of the former President and the ruling party for their acts

Agreement at the Legislative Yuan (parliament) within thirty seconds, unevenly favouring and allowing Chinese investments in Taiwanese service industries. In protest against this act of “selling Taiwan”, the Sunflower Student Movement in 2014 was formed. This student movement went viral, joined by Taiwanese abroad as an anti-black box movement. See, for instance, Keri Phillips, “Student Protests Over Free Trade Deal Shake Taiwan”, 29 April 2014 https://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/rearvision/taiwans-sunflower-student-movement/5418698> 19 September 2018. 6 For further information, see The Centre for Thomas More Studies at The University of Dallas, 2010 <https://thomasmorestudies.org/g-c1.html> 04 March 2018. 7 Gao, Fang 高放, “<Wu tuo bang> zai Zhongguo de bainian chuanbo—guanyu fanyishi ji qi

banben de xueshu kaocha” 《乌托邦》在中国的百年传播—关于翻译史及其版本的学术考察 [A Hundred Years of Utopia in China: A Scholarly Review of the History of Chinese Translators

and Translations of Utopia]. Zhongguo shehui kexue中国社会科学 (2017): 181-204. The English title

is the original. 8 Gao 204. 9 Gao 204. 10 The original reads: “富强、民主、文明、和谐的社会主义现代化大国”. Gao 204.

https://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/rearvision/taiwans-sunflower-student-movement/5418698


https://thomasmorestudies.org/g-c1.html

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compromising democracy, while, in China, Utopia is an instrument for the dissemination of

communist ideology. The fact that Utopia remains a viable reference that is differently

applicable across the Taiwan Strait invites enquiry as to how Utopia has been translated and

received, as well as how the concept of utopia has been appropriated.

***

And yet, it took four centuries for Utopia to be translated into Mandarin. First published in

Louvain in 1516, More’s work, written in Latin, was translated into six European

vernaculars during the early modern period: German in 1524, Italian in 1548, French in

1550, English in 1551, Dutch in 1553, and Spanish in 1643.11 While the first English

translation saw the light in 1551 and enjoyed periodic cycles of reincarnation through

several retranslations in the centuries to come, a Mandarin edition was not attempted until

1935. Undeterred by its late arrival, the Mandarin Utopias12 blossomed in a relatively shorter

period of time compared to its English cousins: fourteen standalone editions can be

counted up to 2016, the quincentenary of Utopia’s first publication. Of the fourteen

editions, two are abridged,13 while one qualifies as an adaptation that reads almost like an

illustrative traveller’s tale;14 five were published in Taiwan (1957, 1966, 1978, 1997, and

2003),15 and the rest in China.

Telling the history of Utopia in Mandarin entails delving deep into the book and its

context. Although I acknowledge the importance of context (and I tackle it to a certain

extent in this dissertation), my main concern is with the book itself, in particular: 1) the

translations and mistranslations of Utopia (one can never forget how “Princeps Utopus”,

11 It should be noted that the first Italian edition was entitled Eutopia. See Gregory Claeys, Searching for Utopia: The History of an Idea (London: Thames & Hudson, 2011) 59. 12 I use “Mandarin Utopia” or “Mandarin Utopias” to refer to the target texts, firstly for ease of reading as well as for avoiding repetition throughout the dissertation. 13 The 1935 and 1957 editions are abridged. The 2005 edition is slightly abridged; yet because the content remains largely similar to the original, I exclude it from my consideration of abridged editions. 14 Hu Fengfei published two editions in 2007 and 2012; however, except for the change in book cover, variation was scant. I therefore consider Hu’s as one single edition, and I adopt the 2012 edition in this dissertation. 15 The 1997 edition was originally published in China, but this time it was entrusted to a different publisher and printed with different paratexts. The changes in ancillary items are the main grounds on which I consider it a separate edition.

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the ruler who gave Utopia its current name, was rendered as King Utopus in half of the

Mandarin versions, effectively turning Utopia into a monarchy); 2) the appropriations (the

1957 edition, for example, forges the translator’s words as the original, articulating his view

on love and liberty); 3) the whole paratextual apparatus that was pivotal to the making of

Utopia (only one version [2003] includes a majority of the authorial paratexts, whereas the

most recent one [2016], surprisingly, excludes all).

By looking into each of these aspects, I aim at understanding the experience that

the Mandarin readers of Utopia have had for the past eighty years – that is to say, how

Utopia has been presented and re-packaged in its Mandarin afterlives, how these aspects

have influenced Utopia as a final translated product, and what kinds of Utopia have been

engendered through this appropriation. I borrow the phrase “afterlife” from Walter

Benjamin, who considers translation as the afterlife of the original: “For a translation

comes later than the original, and since the important works of world literature never find

their chosen translators at the time of their origin, their translation marks their stage of

continued life.”16 I use the plural form “afterlives” deliberately, as Utopia’s legacy has gone

far beyond its translation: it is more than a textual reincarnation, having branched out into

multifaceted manifestations, including a commonly-used term, a graphic novel adaptation,

toponyms, the alias of a social media celebrity, and the naming of a recent large-scale

concert as well as a music festival, to name just a few.

My dissertation examines the textual legacy of More’s Utopia in Mandarin, primarily

via its translations and paratexts, as well as its appropriation in the modern context. Since

those documents constituting the paratextual apparatus take up a quarter of the whole of

Utopia as a printed volume as it first appeared, a holistic understanding of Utopia should be

approached in the light of them. 17 Similar works on Utopia’s paratexts in the major

European languages have been conducted in recent years,18 but such a project with regard

to Mandarin Chinese has not received the attention it deserves. My aim is to fill this gap.19

16 Walter Benjamin, “The Task of the Translator: An Introduction to the Translation of Baudelaire’s Tableaux Parisiens”, The Translation Studies Reader, ed. Lawrence Venuti (London: Routledge, 2000) 16. 17 This proportion is suggested by J. C. Davis. See Davis, “Thomas More’s Utopia: Sources, Legacy, and Interpretation”, The Cambridge Companion to Utopian Literature, ed. Gregory Claeys (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010) 36. 18 See, for instance, Thomas More’s Utopia in Early Modern Europe: Paratexts and Contexts, ed. Terence Cave (Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 2012). 19 One exception is the article published by Gao Fang in 2017, as discussed in passing at the outset of the Introduction. While he also tackles the translation history of Utopia in Mandarin, he does

16

The target areas of this study – China and Taiwan – share a spoken language but have

opposite ideologies. Taiwan prides itself on being one of the most democratic countries in

Asia, whereas with the Communist Party in power, the Chinese regime has in recent years

been trying to whitewash some of its human rights abuses,20 among others, and to advocate

its association with democracy on its own terms, as is shown in the previously quoted essay

from Gao Fang. The 2018 “Orwellian Nonsense” of China’s Civil Aviation Administration

ordering 36 airline companies to remove references to Taiwan as a country independent

from China has yet again escalated the tension in the region.21 It has not been easy to

explain the cross-strait tension in a few words; it is all the more difficult to tread on the ice

that is this cultural, historical, and national identity, without compromising the integrity of

my research. The similarities and (more evidently) differences led me to ponder what kinds

of Utopia would be translated and received on both sides of the Taiwan Strait.

1 COMMEMORATION OF UTOPIA: TEXTUAL AFTERLIVES AND BEYOND

The quincentennial of the publication of Thomas More’s Utopia was commemorated on a

global scale in 2016. As the impressive number of conferences, seminars, workshops, fairs,

festivals, cycles of music, concerts, book presentations, and a myriad of small, medium,

and large-scale events that were held in different countries attested, Utopia’s afterlives go far

beyond the book itself. 2016 and the year after saw two special issues of the Journal of the

Society for Utopian Studies, paying homage to the fifth centennial of Utopia’s first publication.

The first issue is divided into two parts, mapping the research activities in selected

countries in the hope of expanding transnational networking opportunities, and the

publication history of Utopia into these six languages. The second special issue, likewise,

presents two thematic discussions: the first half reconsiders fashion in the light of utopian

thinking that goes beyond academic discourse. The second half tackles the events taking

not analyse the texts via close reading, nor does he apply the concept of paratexts to his reading of Utopia, as I am proposing here. 20 For instance, see “China has Turned Xinjiang into a Police State Like No Other”, The Economist 31 May 2018 https://www.economist.com/briefing/2018/05/31/china-has-turned-xinjiang-into-a-police-state-like-no-other> 10 Oct 2018. 21 See, for instance, David Shepardson’s “U.S. Condemns China for ‘Orwellian Nonsense’ Over Airline Websites”, Reuters, 5 May 2018 <https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-airlines-china-exclusive/u-s-condemns-china-for-orwellian-nonsense-over-airline-websites-idUSKBN1I60NL> 12 June 2018.

https://www.economist.com/briefing/2018/05/31/china-has-turned-xinjiang-into-a-police-state-like-no-other

https://www.economist.com/briefing/2018/05/31/china-has-turned-xinjiang-into-a-police-state-like-no-other

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-airlines-china-exclusive/u-s-condemns-china-for-orwellian-nonsense-over-airline-websites-idUSKBN1I60NL


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place in six selected European countries and titles related to utopia published in the said

countries as well as in China and Taiwan. I was fortunate enough to become aware of the

breadth and implications of utopian thinking while researching for my dissertation as a

member of CETAPS – the Centre for English, Translation, and Anglo-Portuguese Studies

– while the Utopia500 programme was being prepared.22 Not only was I invited to be part

of the Utopia500 team, but also to coordinate one outreach strand, Sounds of Utopia, which

I articulated with my work placement at Casa da Música. 23 I researched early modern

English and Continental composers and musical pieces that Thomas More might have

been exposed to or might have had contact with while he was writing Utopia, and located

the scores for my selection. This laid the groundwork for Sounds of Utopia,24 which was to

be made into a challenge for music enthusiasts to perform one of the selected pieces,

public or otherwise, in the manner in which it was initially played or in their own

22 Utopia500 engages in identifying activities pertinent to utopia taking place worldwide and making possible workshops, exhibitions, conferences, and performances to the public. The fact that Utopia500 benefited from trainees of the Erasmus+ internship from different countries is a telling reflection on the utopian spirit, in which boundaries are to be merged. 23 Another task during my stint there – observing two social inclusion projects – was in fact volunteer work that had, unexpectedly but gratifyingly, led to a concrete product pertinent to celebrating the themes of Utopia. A couple of personal life events prompted me to volunteer in the A Casa vai a Casa project that was being carried out by the Education Service of Casa da Música. It runs several sub-projects biannually, each of which is held once a week. I observed two workshops; one in a juvenile detention centre, and the other with patients from a psychiatric institution. The main objective was to stimulate artistic experience and to invigorate social inclusivity. An optional performance could be arranged during the last session of the workshop, and both groups opted for it. Observing this (and in a way being a participant) gave me some first-hand experience and reaffirmed how these are in fact the utopian manifestations that prioritise the involvement of underprivileged communities, with music as the essential ingredient. In this particular case, both the utopian spirit and music present possibilities and portray alternative realities – even just temporarily – that encourage inclusivity, harmony, and, for some, a sense of recognition and achievement. I suggested to the Education Service coordinator Jorge Prendas that the whole initiative, which was mainly but not limited to A Casa vai a Casa, was a de facto utopia (to appropriate this concept in a lay discourse) because it reached out and aimed to include everyone. Toward the end of my placement, Jorge came to thank me for giving them this idea and told me that there would be a concert named “Utopia” to be held on 22nd and23rd March 2016. Unlike the other ‘professional’ concerts performed by musicians, this concert was a collaborative effort between the workshop leaders and some of the underprivileged communities. It was gratifying to see that the relevance of utopia – in whichever form – was being further acknowledged and promoted, and that a concert was put together with a title that did not just celebrate utopia, but worked like a call to action. It was not a new thing for a social inclusion project to be developed into a formal performance, but it was the first time when the underlying utopian spirit of those projects was recognised, which saw the process of change taking place. 24 I selected pieces to be diverse both geographically (English or Franco-Flemish) and in genre (religious vs secular, a cappella vs accompanied), but the overarching selection criteria were based on representing the notion of musica reservata, the focus on lyrical expressiveness that often featured in early modern music.

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interpretation. 25 All this and more reflects that utopia has traversed far beyond the

common pejorative association of being a far-fetched abstraction.

While I was working within a European context, I kept asking myself how Utopia

was being celebrated in China and Taiwan. An invitation to contribute to the Utopian Studies

journal prompted me to research book titles relevant to Utopia published in China and

Taiwan from 2016 to the first half of 2017.26 Research for this article inspired my idea

(hence part of my dissertation title) of “textual afterlives”: how Utopia has been expanded

on in various versions of translations, as well as paratexts, and how this term and concept

has been appropriated to different ends, all contribute to its afterlives and the amplification

of Utopia’s legacy.

Entitling my dissertation “Utopia Refracted through Mandarin Lenses”, I read “lens” as

a metaphor at work with André Lefevere’s conceptualisation of refraction, or theory of

rewriting. Proposed by Lefevere, refraction is “the adaptation of a work of literature to a

different audience, with the intention of influencing the way in which that audience reads

the work”.27 In a general sense as how Lefevere defines refraction, adaptation can likewise

be taken within the realm of refraction, or a theory of rewriting. While Julie Sanders points

out that an adaptation is “an amplicatory procedure engaged in addition, expansion,

accretion, and interpolation”,28 I find Linda Hutcheon’s tripartite definition closer to the

discussion of adaptation in my project—especially the second point in which she

postulates that “the act of adaptation always involves both (re-)interpretation and (re-

)creation”.29 This brings up one crucial distinction between translation and adaptation, that

the latter shall not be bound to the traditional fidality criticism. Instead, adaptation is, as

Hutcheon suggests, “an act of appropriation or salvaging, and this is always a double

25 The trainees saw the rest of the preparation and its end result, which can be viewed here at Sounds of Utopia, 2016 <https://www.utopia500.net/sounds-of-utopia> 04 Feb 2017. 26 This is incorporated into Chapter Five of this thesis. In addition, an earlier (and much abridged) version of Chapter Two was to become the basis of the first article I contributed to the Utopian Studies journal. See Yi-Chun Liu, “Translating and Transforming Utopia into the Mandarin Context: Case Studies from China and Taiwan”, Journal of the Society for Utopian Studies 27.2 (2016): 333-45, and “The Textual Afterlives of Utopia: Titles Published in China and Taiwan since 2016”, Journal of the Society for Utopian Studies 28.3 (2017): 656-63. 27 André Lefevere, “Mother Courage’s Cucumbers: Text, System and Refraction in a Theory of Literature”, The Translation Studies Reader, ed. Lawrence Venuti (London: Routledge, 2000) 35. 28 Julie Sanders, Adaptation and Appropriation (London: Routledge, 2005) 18. 29 Hutchen sees the phenomena of adaptation as three phases: as “a formal entity”, as “a process of creation”, and as “a form of intertextuality”. See Linda Hutcheon, A Theory of Adaptation (New York: Routledge, 2006) 8.

https://www.utopia500.net/sounds-of-utopia

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process of interpreting and then creating something new”.30 It is no longer a relaying of

words into different linguistic and semantic units; the source texts are filtered through and

coloured with the mediator’s interpretation and addition. Hutcheon offers a corrective to

viewing adaptation, that it is “a derivation that is not derivative – a work that is second

without being secondary. It is its own palimpsestic thing”.31 With an adaptation, there still

exists a reference point, namely the source text. They are comparative in nature, but they

shall not be taken hierarchically. It is not about whether an adaptation stays with or drifts

away from the source text, but how creatively it has sprung from it. Thus, whenever

adaptation is concerned, the focus goes beyond, in Douglas Lanier’s words, “an ethical

imperative of fidelity”. 32 Seeing adaptation from such a perspective deftly recognises

several of the Mandarin Utopias as an adaptive work. In particular, I refer to Liu

Chengshao’s (1957), Wu Lei’s (2005), Hu Fenghei’s (2007 & 2012) editions as such. Here I

understand adaptation not in terms of its commonly understood transposition, that of a

generic shift; rather, I consider the work whose translator’s voice overriding the original

narrative to be an adaptive work.

While both adaptation and refraction are about rewriting, what is also relevant to

my project is how Lefevere sees refraction at the service of influencing the target audience:

A writer’s work gains exposure and achieves influence mainly through “misunderstandings and misconceptions,” or, to use a more neutral term, refractions. Writers and their work are always understood and conceived against a certain background or, if you will, are refracted through a certain spectrum, just as their work itself can refract previous works through a certain spectrum.33

I use refraction as a phenomenon that covers both the act of translation and adaptation,

whose intention is to influence how a reader receives a work and whose end product is

filtered through the mediator’s interpretations. As if through a reading glass, we read a

translated work primarily through the mediation of the translator’s interpretation and

words. In the case of Utopia, “misunderstandings and misconceptions” are not infrequent.

Sometimes they appear as pure misunderstanding, sometimes as deliberate appropriation,

whereas there are times when they are the end-product of the translator’s obvious

30 Hutcheon 20. 31 Hutcheon 9. 32 Douglas Lanier, “Shakspearean Rhizomatics: Adaptation, Ethics, Value”, Shakespeare and the Ethics of Appropriation, eds. Alexa Huang and Elizabeth Rivlin (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014) 21. 33 Lefevere (2000) 234.

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negligence. More subtly, refraction in my project should be understood in a much larger

spectrum: Mandarin Utopias are primarily refracted through, but not limited to, its

translations; the Chinese archetypes delineating an ideal realm set the context for Utopia’s

initial refraction, which is further extended into its “stage of continued life” via means of

translations and texts appropriating the concept of utopia, ultimately amplifying its layers

of meaning and significance.

2 DEFINITIONS OF UTOPIA

The crucial first step in the modern study of utopia was […] the definitional one.34

The sixteenth-century neologism “utopia” consists of the prefix punning on eu and the

negation ou, and the suffix topos which stands for place. The negative etymology of utopia,

ou-topia, highlights its non-existence; in D. B. Fenlon’s phrase, it insinuates the futility of

attempting to reach utopia because any attempt is destined to “get nowhere”.35 The nature

of the non-existence of utopia is projected in the book’s original title, Nusquama, which

means nowhere in Latin.36 Paul Oskar Kristeller indicates that this coinage originates from

the ninth book of Plato’s Republic, where “the perfect republic [Socrates] and his friends

have been describing exists only in their discourse, but nowhere on earth (ges ge oudamou)”.37

Likewise, quoting Glaucon, Dominic Baker-Smith comments that the self-negating feature

of the invented names may serve as a homage to “Plato’s city of words in the Republic

which can be found nowhere on earth”.38 While Republic deals with the topic of an ideal

commonwealth in an argumentative way, and Utopia does so via a speculative approach,

34 Peter Fitting, “A Short History of Utopian Studies”, Science Fiction Studies 36.1 (2009): 125. 35 D. B. Fenlon, “England and Europe: Utopia and Its Aftermath”, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society 25 (1975): 124. 36 Dominic Baker-Smith points out that as of September 1516, More still called this little golden book Nusquama, and that Erasmus, aiming for the same readership of his own Moriae Encomium (1511), was responsible for the final title Utopia. Baker-Smith, “On Translating More’s Utopia”, Canadian Review of Comparative Literature 41.4 (2014): 492. See also Baker-Smith, More’s Utopia (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2000) 35. 37 Paul Oskar Kristeller, “Thomas More as a Renaissance Humanist”, Moreana 65-66 (June 1980): 10. 38 Baker-Smith (2014) 495. See also Baker-Smith, “The Location of Utopia: Narrative Devices in a Renaissance Fiction”, Addressing Frank Kermode: Essays in Criticism and Interpretation, eds Margaret Tudeau-Clayton and Martin Warner (London: Macmillan, 1991) 116-17.

21

Kristeller emphasises that they only “lived in [the author’s] discourse”, and that the

objective of creating such elaborate discourses was not for actual realisation (as their

authors were fully aware of the limitations) but to set up “exemplars worthy of imitation

and of approximation”.39 One crucial qualification of a literary utopia is reinforced here:

that it is meant for readers to challenge their current worldview. In other words, even if the

ideal world cannot be materially implemented, it is nevertheless a vision to work on, to

improve the status quo, and ultimately to transform and approximate the ideal.

In his elaborate volume Utopia and the Ideal Society (1981), J. C. Davis disputes the

two adjectives that are often adopted to describe utopia: “better” and “dream”. He

dismisses these two terms as not self-defining and too subjective: for him, “better” is not

precise enough, and a profound sense of impracticality is attached to “dream”. While

Davis avoids using the word “better”, he nonetheless proposes that the concept of

“betterness” does envisage a threefold taxonomy, all parts of which explicitly or implicitly

reject the status quo: a) an escapist dream; b) a satirical reflection; c) a blueprint for action.40

Even though the underlying connotations of “betterness” are commonly associated with

how one perceives utopia, Davis argues that it should be substituted with “perfection”,41 a

term that Lyman Sargent finds deeply problematic. “Perfection”, for Sargent, is a subjective

variant, dependent upon an individual’s preferred values and allowing no space for

improvement. Agreeing with Sargent but arguing from a theological standpoint, Gregory

Claeys contends that “‘perfection’ is essentially a theological concept which, while

historically linked to utopianism, defines a state that is impossible for mortals to attain in

this life”.42 Indeed, “perfection” is intrinsically excluded from this line of thought, which is

fundamentally about human beings in this life.

While “better” and “perfect” are often adopted to portray utopia, another

conventional way of defining utopia is to distinguish between utopianism, literary utopia,

and utopian theory. In his often-cited essay “The Three Faces of Utopianism Revisited”

(1994), Lyman Tower Sargent distinguishes utopianism, or what he calls “social dreaming”,

into three facets: communitarianism, 43 utopian social thought, and the literary utopia.

39 Kristeller (1980) 11. 40 J. C. Davis, Utopia and the Ideal Society: A Study of English Utopian Writing 1516-1700 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981) 13-14. 41 Davis argues that the three cardinal features of the utopian form are totality, order, and perfection. See Davis (1981) 14. 42 Claeys (2011) 11-12. 43 Several labels have been adopted to refer to this subject—intentional community, collective settlement, alternative society, experimental community, among others—the first of which is the

22

Similar categorisation can be found in the work of Claeys (2011). In his lucid account of

the history of utopia, Claeys asserts that utopian studies are centred on three domains:

utopian thought, utopian literature, and improved communities – which shows the

development of an idea taking shape in textual form and/or being translated into action.

Whilst communitarianism is manifested in the form of intentional societies, utopian social

theory is understood, in Peter Fitting’s concise—though reductive—observation, “within

the history of the idea of progress”.44 The term “progress”, however, has been tainted with

a certain degree of ideological colour, depending on the context in which it is brought up.

Just as one man’s utopia is another’s dystopia, “progress” could mean massively different

objectives and agendas for varied groups, circumstances, and regimes. The Berlin Wall built

by the German Democratic Republic, Mao’s China where the Great Leap and the Cultural

Revolution took place, or the Bolshevik Revolution that created Soviet Russia – to name

just the obvious – all demonstrate how “progress” can be a very different construct for

different groups, and all this has regrettably rendered the idea of progress void of any

objective validity. Fred Polak puts it well that “once [a man] became conscious of creating

images of the future, he became a participant in the process of creating this future.”45

Adding to this, I suggest that our images of the future also help to shape the image of the

now, and that the actual future is built upon the here-and-now. This is why utopia ought to

be deemed a projective vision of our ideal, the pursuit of which has been the essence of

existence throughout human history. Literary utopias, such as Tommasco Campanella’s The

City of the Sun (1602) and Sir Francis Bacon’s New Atlantis (1627), modelled on More’s

paradigm, indeed point to the projective and rationalistic nature of utopia, but the almost

instinctual reaction to transforming for the better should be understood as a basic human

need, without which humanity and human history would not have evolved as much. Such

projections necessarily involve progression toward the envisaged future, otherwise they end

most popular. While Sargent enumerates these variants, he suggests that the term “communitarian”—as “utopian” does in this context—connotes “an economic system without private property”, whereas the word “intentional” does not. See Sargent, “The Three Faces of Utopianism Revisited”, Utopian Studies 5.1 (1994): 13-14. 44 Fitting 125. 45 Fred Polak, The Image of the Future, trans. Elise Boulding (Amsterdam: Elsevier Sdentific Publishing, 1973) 6.

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up being empty talk, exactly like the pejorative undertone with which utopia or being

utopian has been often associated.46

In comparing the utopian visions of the East and the West, Zhang Longxi

proposes the following, which I find most suitable in understanding utopia on several

fronts:

Such a desire seems to be deeply ingrained in the very nature of the human condition, as no one in any society is unwilling, if not actively trying, to make life better and to achieve the optimum out of our limited resources and capabilities.47

This passage first explains the universality of the utopian impulse and then concludes with

the characteristic that distinguishes utopia from other forms of ideal societies – the human

capacity to achieve the optimum. Zhang opts for “better” over “perfect” here; he further

adds what I consider the most fitting phrase, trumping both better and perfect: “to achieve

the optimum out of our limited resources and capabilities.” The optimum is not just the

better, which is subject to the degree of goodness; it is also not perfection, which does not

make room for improvement and hence produces no sense of practicality. This urge to

achieve the optimum is grounded in the confidence that humans are capable of making

changes as well as in the awareness that what they have, in terms of resources and ability, is

not without limitation, thus demonstrating a kind of meliorism, a concept stressed by

Zhang in his analysis of Utopia, combined with a sense of humility. Or as Lucy Sargisson

comments on Ernst Bloch’s idea of “forward dawning”: “For Bloch, [the utopian] impulse

or propensity is grounded in our capacity to fantasize beyond our experience, and in our ability

to rearrange the world around us.”48

In an age of constant crises, I find Fátima Vieira’s article (2017) on political and

philosophical utopias opportune in portraying the contemporary utopian mentality.49 In

analysing how contemporary utopianism is primarily informed by a philosophical take,

Vieira discusses the distinction between the political utopia and the philosophical. She sees

46 For instance, in China, “utopian socialism” has been commonly rendered as “社會空想主義”,

literally “social empty-thought-ism”. An equation of “utopian” with “empty thought” is evident here. 47 Zhang Longxi, Allegoresis: Reading Canonical Literature East and West (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 2005) 165-66. 48 My emphasis. See Lucy Sargisson, Contemporary Feminist Utopianism (London and New York: Routledge, 1996) 1. Sargisson uses the 1986 English translation of Bloch’s 1957 revised edition of The Principle of Hope. See Ernst Bloch, The Principle of Hope, trans. Neville Plaice, Stephen Plaice, and Paul Knight (Oxford: Blackwell, 1986, 1957) 3. 49 Vieira (2017) 63-75.

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the fundamental difference in the attitude toward aiming to improve. That is, in the former,

the political project coincides with the utopian “dream”, whereas in the latter the dream

always exceeds the possibility of its realisation. Vieira resorts to Fernando de Mello Moser’s

proposal of seeing a dialectical structure in Utopia, i.e. that it is composed of Book One as

a thesis and Book Two as an antithesis, and solicits readers to produce a synthesis, “thus

escaping the circularity of the utopian discourse”, whose definitional tension is manifest

already from its etymological roots.50 That is, utopia, being a conflation of eu-topia and ou-

topia, is a good place that is a non-place, which means that while we know it is non-existent,

it is nevertheless a good place towards whose condition we should aspire. The constant

circularity rooted in the etymology of utopia was first proposed by Louis Marin, who

argues that this circularity makes utopia not achievable but at the same time provides a

space to express and to strive for the inexpressible.51 Vieira adopts Moser’s reasoning as the

grounds of her analysis, arguing that “[a]lthough […] utopia has lost the clear ideological

commitment it used to have at the time of the grand utopian narratives, contemporary

utopian thinking is still based on a dialectical strategy that the author expects the reader to

be involved with.”52 This call for readerly intervention, that the “reader is part of the

utopian equation”,53 is not a novel concept in reception theory; yet observing it from the

history of Utopia’s Mandarin translations (e.g. recent editions tend to present a flat

interpretation, thus evincing an insufficient understanding of the authorial paratexts that

are part of More’s utopian scheme) and how Utopia has been written about (i.e. recent

articles published in China demonstrate a significant rise in readerly intervention on the

level of the authors, most of whose intention involves disseminating socialist ideology),

Vieira’s postulation is instructive of how Utopia can be read afresh by situating readers on

the utopian equation and by exploring what syntheses are produced thereby.

50 Quoted in Vieira (2017) 64. The original is to be found in Fernando de Mello Moser, Tomás More e os Caminhos da Perfeição Humana (Lisbon: Vega, 1982) 19-35. 51 Eugene Hill, “The Place of the Future: Louis Marin and his Utopiques”, Science Fiction Studies 9 (1982): 167-79. Cf. Louis Marin, Utopics: Spatial Play, trans. Robert A. Vollrath (London: Macmillan, 1984). 52 Vieira (2017) 64. 53 Vieira (2017) 72.

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3 READINGS OF UTOPIA

The early reactions to Utopia, i.e. during More’s lifetime, either considered Utopia “vain

poetry” or attacked More for betraying the truth that he saw in order to climb up the

ladder of political influence. 54 Before the 1970s, interpretations of Utopia were a

straightforward “either-or” reading: a political treatise or a literary work representing

More’s fanciful aspirations. 55 While Elizabeth McCutcheon indicates a resurgence of

translations and editions of Utopia during the 1960s and 70s,56 Alistair Fox points out that

the 1970s witnessed a wave of modern critical theories that reshaped the reception of

Utopia.57

The two main conventional ways of approaching a text are firstly to see what the

author has in mind, as opposed to how and what audiences (readers, publishers, translators,

and editors) have done with the text. Fox defines it this way: to read a text either as how

the author negotiates his/her meaning, or to see how “part of the meaning of a text

resides in the responses that it elicits from readers”.58 The second approach, Fox indicates,

is fundamental to the new awareness, starting from the mid-1960s, that began to treat

Utopia “as an ironic representation rather than a straightforward narrative, in a long line of

such ironic works that appeared during the English Renaissance”.59 In discussing the critical

reception after the mid-60s, Fox pinpoints how the ambiguity throughout Utopia is due to

“its rhetorical structure and status as fiction”, thus making the existence of Utopia “less

final goal than a stance or state of mind”. 60 This ambiguity is the result of More’s

dividedness of mind which, I suggest, is manifest via the two narrative devices – fiction

and dialogue – to be delved into in Chapter One.

While earlier receptions tended to present an “either-or” dichotomic interpretation,

Fox indicates that recent scholarship, including postmodern theory, has reached a

54 Alistair Fox, Utopia: An Elusive Vision (New York: Twayne Publishers, 1993) 17. 55 Fox suggests that the three major readings of Utopia before the 1970s were “that of the political theorists, the Protestant, and the Catholic”. See Fox 20. 56 Elizabeth McCutcheon, “Ten English Translations/Editions of Thomas More’s Utopia”, Utopian Studies 3.2 (1992): 108. This had a major reflection in the publication of the Yale edition in 1965, even though Fox maintains that the new awareness of seeing the ironic structure of Utopia did not appear in this authoritative volume. See Fox 21. 57 Fox 20-23. 58 Fox 21. 59 Fox 21. Cf. Harry Berger, “The Renaissance Imagination: Second World and Green World”, Centennial Review 9 (1965): 36-77; and W. J. Barnes, “Irony and the English Apprehension of Renewal”, Queen’s Quarterly 73 (1966): 357-76. 60 Fox 21.

26

consensus that a definitive reading of Utopia recognises its nebulousness.61 Almost three

decades have passed since Fox’s observation in the 1990s; this consensus has remained.

The grounds on which Utopia invites such profuse and vacillating readings, I believe, should

be traced primarily via its rhetoric, more precisely in its complexities, furthered by the

whole paratextual apparatus as well as the generic presentation of fiction and dialogue.

Richard J. Schoeck urges readers to “consider and accept the book as having a serious

purpose but [that it argues] through an ironic structure”.62 Schoeck’s argument is the result

of understanding the rhetoric of Utopia; indeed, we will discover the ironic function of

More’s paratexts that originally aimed at deluding readers into believing and simultaneously

challenging the island’s existential authenticity. For instance, A. R. Heiserman asserts that

the introductory apparatus was to ensure readers that Utopia “‘exists’ only in the manner

of all Platonic ideas – nowhere”. 63 Similarly, Alistair Fox acknowledges the mutually

contradictory readings that Utopia has generated, and postulates that the “breakthrough for

students of Utopia occurs when they recognize that the confused reaction they have to it is

the product of More’s rhetorical design”.64 Utopia’s rhetorical design is the main source of

perplexity and frustration of locking down a definite reading. David Bevington pinpoints

such dynamics in the opening of his essay, arguing that a critical reading of Utopia can be

approached from either a socialist or an anti-Communist perspective, thus leading to

Thomas More being revered by both Soviet Russia and the Papacy.65 Contrary to either

approach, one central theme in Utopia, communal property and whether or not More

believed in its feasibility, has likewise invited diverse interpretations. While the mention of

abolishing private ownership has been taken as the source of socialism, Stephen Greenblatt

offers a fresh outlook: “Like Marx’s early Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts, More’s work

propounds communism less as a coherent economic program than as a weapon against

certain tendencies in human nature: selfishness and pride.”66 Placing Utopia into the larger

context of delving into the root cause of its socio-economic injustice, Greenblatt’s

61 Fox 22. 62 Richard J. Schoeck, “‘A Nursery of Correct and Useful Institutions’: On Reading More’s Utopia as Dialogue”, Moreana 22 (1969): 19. 63 A. R. Heiserman, “Satire in the ‘Utopia,’” PMLA 78.3 (1963): 166. 64 Fox 27. 65 David Bevington, “The Dialogue in Utopia: Two Sides to the Question”, Studies in Philology 58.3 (1961): 496. Karl Kautsky also hailed More as the “prophet of modern communism.” See Fox 18. 66 Stephen Greenblatt, Renaissance Self-Fashioning: From More to Shakespeare (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1980) 36.

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approach is neither a communist nor conservative reading, but one that sheds light on

human nature.

Today Utopia has reached different nations and cultures, and readers of different

age groups, interests, and agendas. What are readers reading Utopia for? Readers choose

what they want to read. With a text that has been so versatile and liable to protean

interpretations, Lyman Sargent asks: “what does [Utopia] leave for those who do not know

how to read the text before they read it?”67 This is not just about those without a guide to

reading the work. More specifically, this enquiry is about those who have no prior

knowledge of the intricacies of Renaissance rhetoric, which had an immense impact on the

shaping of Utopia. I am analysing not how to reach a “correct” reading, but how

understanding the rhetoric of Utopia sheds light on the reading of it, especially for a target

group (for instance modern-day readers reading in Mandarin) whose prior knowledge of

Renaissance rhetoric is limited. What differences does it make to the reading experience to

have this rhetorical knowledge in mind? Or, to what extent do those differences hold sway

over the reading experiences, and how do they affect the lingual-cultural transfer of Utopia?

What kind of reading would be produced without being aware of paratexts, or without

recognising how fiction and dialogue are the founding stone of Utopia? “Does it matter?” –

that is the question.

4 CHINESE AND TAIWANESE RECEPTION OF UTOPIA

Published under the commemorative project of Utopia’s quincentenary, an essay by Pu

Guoliang, Professor of International Studies, Renmin University of China, discusses the

cultural and theoretical sources of More’s Utopia.68 The fictional nature of Utopia is not

stressed in the essay and by inference the inevitability of multiple readings of Utopia is

disregarded. When referring to the six-line verse written by the fictional Anemolius, in

which Republic is brought up in comparison to Utopia, Pu refers to this hexastichon as a

mere “序文” (a “prefatory article” in its literal sense) without further discussing the

67 Lyman Sargent, “Five Hundred Years of Thomas More’s Utopia and Utopianism”, Utopian Studies 27.2 (2016): 185. 68 Pu, Guoliang蒲国良, “Mo er wutuobang sixiang de wenhua he lilun yuanyuan” 莫尔乌托邦思

想的文化和理论渊源 [The Cultural and Theoretical Sources of Thomas More’s Utopia], Jiangxi

shifan daxue xuebao江西师范大学学报 49.5 (2016): 24-28.

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relevance of the paratextual apparatus contributed by More’s humanist coterie, evincing a

lack of knowledge about the concept of paratexts. An editorial note is appended prior to

the article, in which the editor Guo Ronhua outlines the “Chinese Dream”: that Utopia

infiltrated China with Liu Linsheng’s translation in 1935, and was to be rooted and

blossomed in Chinese soil, further combined with the ideal of Datong (the Great Unity),

and then the conflation was to become the primary source of the “Chinese Dream” for

which the Chinese strive.69 From highlighting Datong in the context of Utopia, readers get a

sense of how More’s Utopia is appropriated here as the Confucian concept of the Great

Unity, the same concept that was adopted by Dai Liuling in his 1956 edition as part of the

subheadings to books One and Two (though he curiously left it out in his subsequent re-

translation). More ideologically significant is how Guo says of Utopia that after it travelled

across the ocean, it was to be “deeply rooted in the fertile soil” that was China. That Guo

sees Utopia not just as a Western work and construct, but more crucially as a concept

assimilated into Chinese thought, speaks volume for how utopia is being received and

promoted at the higher educational level.

Pu Guoliang published another article in the same year, analysing the major

problems in studies of Utopia in China, the last of which is worth mentioning here: the

insufficient number of studies of Utopia in China.70 Pu places the reasons behind this

deficiency into four categories: that there has not yet been a detailed biography of More;71

that no critical and thorough studies of Utopia have been attempted; that knowledge of the

findings from international academe is wanting; and that the interdisciplinary exchange of

studies of Utopia is inadequate. To the latter, Pu attributes the fact that Utopia in China has

long been tinted with an intense ideological colour. In Pu’s original wording, this happened

“because of many reasons”, without specifying his precise rationale.72 Pu acknowledges

that Utopia is not just a work about socialism, but a classic that touches upon literature, art,

philosophy, and history. What is more, since the other disciplines are relatively free from

69 Pu (2016) 24. The relevant quotation from this passage reads: “莫尔的《乌托邦》飘洋过海来

到中国，深深地扎根于这片沃土，并与这片土地上悠远绵长的大同理想相结合，在这裡

生根、开花、结果，成为当下中国人为之奋斗的「中国梦」的一大思想源头。” 70 Pu Guoliang, “<Wu tuo bang> yanjiu zhong de jige wenti bianxi” <乌托邦>研究中的几个问

题辨析” [Analysis of Several Problems of the Study of Utopia], Fuzhou daxue xuebao福州大学学

报 134 (2016): 5-16. The other major problems include discrepancies about the author’s

biographical background and the exact dates of Utopia’s first publication; the connotations of the neologism “utopia”; the translations of the terms “utopia” and “utopian socialism”. 71 Pu lists two biographies of More, which were translated in Taiwan but have been difficult to get hold of in China except in a few libraries. See Pu (2016) 12. 72 Pu (2016) 10.

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the bounds of ideology, their progress has advanced more than those made in the study of

socialism.

Pinpointing the progress that is lacking in research into Utopia but arguing from a

slightly different perspective,73 Gao Fang observes that there has been a regrettable lack of

MA theses and PhD dissertations from a socialist research angle since the Chinese

economic reform in 1978 – “Reform and Opening Up” – and that although the Society for

Utopian Studies was founded abroad as early as 1976, 74 there have rarely been any

participants from China. Gao encourages a more active engagement in such international

networking opportunities, suggesting that it is a particular Chinese characteristic to research

utopian texts and experiments from a socialist perspective.75 The fact that Gao does not

simply mention the inadequacy of theses but instead describes a lack of them from a

socialist angle is itself a telling sign, not only confirming his role in the Party but further

evincing a loaded ideological proclivity in his approach to Utopia.

Despite Gao Fang’s authoritative status in regards to the study of Utopia and

beyond, he mirrors the theologian who was so taken in by More’s words that he ventured

out to locate the Utopian island. Although well aware that Utopia is a fiction, Gao contends

in one interview that Raphael Hythloday was in actuality a real person who was only made

out to be an invented character to serve the author’s objective.76 When asked whether he

agrees that the character and name of Hythloday are both made up, Gao replied assertively:

“I do not think so.”77 He questions the likelihood of the three prominent humanists’ –

More, Erasmus, and Giles – scheming upon falsifying the narrative. All these factors seem

to be Gao’s justification for his conviction that Utopia is an actual account only made up to

be a feigned one. Being one of the foremost scholars researching Utopia in China, Gao

could not have been this naïve and simply have walked away from all the evidence pointing

to Utopia being More’s own creation. Could it have been part of Gao’s intention of

73 Huang Shuai黄帅, “<Wu tuo bang> yu dangdai shijie he zhongguo—zheming xuezhe Gao fang

jiaoshou fangtanlu” <乌托邦>与当代世界和中国—着名学者高放教授访谈录 [Utopia, the

Contemporary World and China—Interview with Distinguished Professor Gao Fang], Dangdai shijie

shehui zhuyi wenti当代世界社会主义问题 130 (2016): 3-23. 74 Gao does not specify where the “abroad” might be. It can be verified that he refers to the Society founded in North America, which was in fact established in 1975 instead of the year after. Gao overlooks the Society of Utopian Studies in Europe founded in 1988. 75 Huang 4. 76 Gao stresses his stand in an interview with his student Huang Shuai. See Huang, “<Wu tuo

bang> xijie yishi kaobian” <烏托邦>細節軼事考辨 [Textual Research of Details and Anecdotes

in Utopia—Interview with Prof. Gao Fang], Shehui zhuyi yanjiu 社會主義研究 229 (2016): 1-8. 77 “我不以為然” is Gao’s original phrase. See Huang 4.

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suggesting that all the socialist features portrayed in Utopia, such as communal property, are

attested historical facts? By asserting that Utopia is an authentic narrative documenting a

dialogue that truly took place, Gao’s approach renders Utopia not an ou-topia, but an eu-topia

that existed long ago on another continent. This line of reasoning, I suggest, could well

serve as a strategic pretext to introducing Utopia as a historical happening substantiating the

speculative grounds of the Chinese Dream, an approach that is so fervently advocated by

the current Chinese Prime Minister, Xi Jinping, as shown in his speech “Develop

Philosophy and Social Sciences with Chinese Features” delivered on 17 May 2016, in which

he refers to the classics that have influenced his thought; “Utopia by Thomas More” is the

third in line in Xi’s list, after Plato’s Politeia and Aristotle’s Politics.78

Like his article on Utopia’s translation history that ends on an ideological note, this

interview with Gao likewise celebrates the communist spirit, adding his own not-quite-well-

crafted neologisms: harmontopia, trutopia, goodtopia, beautopia, among others.79 Such invented

names, according to Fátima Vieira’s taxonomy, belongs to the class of derivative

neologisms.80 In Gao’s designation, true, good, and beautiful (真善美) are the salient

features that an ideal realm possesses. Once the three characteristics are achieved, the

harmontopia – the utopia of harmony – shall be attained; and this harmontopia is the

extension of communism operating on a worldwide scale, asserts Gao. Two intriguing

phenomena are observed here: firstly, a heightened sense of nationalistic ideology is

forthrightly proclaimed, believing China to be the leading force of the coming

“Worldutopia”; and that communism is advocated with counter-intuitive traits such as

“harmony”, a term that is often associated with pastoral visions such as Arcadia or the

Chinese archetype of the ideal realm, Peach Blossom Spring. Secondly, derivative results of

the sixteenth-century neologism “utopia” are being exercised here, but regrettably to a

poor end. What Gao Fang does is, through a reductivist approach, simply conflate two

Anglophone words to create his new terms. This is especially evident in the case of

“goodtopia”, which is simply a crude version of “eutopia”.

While there have been a number of academic debates on and propagation of

More’s Utopia in China, of the fifty-eight journal articles published in Taiwan between 2016

78 Xi Jinping, The Governance of China, vol. II (Beijing: Foreign Language Press, 2018) 366-77. 79 Huang 22. 80 Fátima Vieira, “The Concept of Utopia”, The Cambridge Companion to Utopian Literature, ed. Gregory Claeys (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010) 3, 23. Ecotopias, alotopias, and most recently alimentopias related to food studies are the noted examples. The American computer-animated film Zootopia, released in 2016, also finely illustrates a derivative neologism.

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to 2018 that I retrieved from Index to Taiwan Periodical Literature System, only one piece

touches upon Utopia’s fifth centennial. Even then, this article by Huang Hai centres on

science fiction, and the mention of Utopia is equated with the last Shangri-La. 81 The

distinguished sci-fi writer Zhang Xiguo, on the other hand, delivered a keynote speech in

2017 examining the idea of utopia and science fiction.82 Rather than delving into More’s

Utopia, Zhang starts with, in a general sense, the East’s and the West’s conceptions of an

ideal world, and further applies utopia to contemporary society, arguing that whichever

name “utopia” is called by, it all comes down to how a person settles in the world.

Expanding from the American architect Frank Lloyd Wright’s prospect-refuge theory,

Zhang suggests that the settling of a person is about prospect and refuge, that s/he departs

and strive for the bright, the prospect; and once it is achieved, s/he retreats to the hidden,

the homeland. Zhang relates this depart-retreat dichotomy to the ideal realms of the East

and West, arguing that the bright vision for which the Occidentals depart is Utopia and that

the hidden shelters to which the Orientals retreat is Peach Blossom Spring.83 This is a plain

generalisation that I myself take issue with. Yet this argument coming from an influential

sci-fi writer, who has written a collection of essays entitled Vtopia delineating a futuristic

virtual world,84 subtly highlights the common association of Utopia and Peach Blossom

Spring and insinuates a level of misconception that the reception of Utopia tends to be

refracted through. The lack of scholarly discourse on More’s Utopia in Taiwan85 and the

selected example of Zhang Xiguo’s understanding of the concept of utopia both

demonstrate that the study of Utopia in Taiwan is open to wider discussion. The above

indicate that Utopia in Taiwan has received fewer reviews than its more “fashionable”

81 Huang Hai 黃海, “Wu tuo bang wu bai nian yu Xiang ge li la” 烏托邦五百年與香格里拉 [Five

Hundred Years of Utopia and Shangri-La], Literature of the Saline Land 65 (2016): 203-10. 82 Zhang Xiguo 張系國, “Zhu qian bao, ke ji cheng yu wu tuo bang: wo de ke huan xiao shuo

chuang zuo zhuan ti yan jiang” 竹塹堡、科技城與烏托邦：我的科幻小說創作專題演講

[Zhubaobao, Science City and Utopia: My Lecture on Science-Fiction Creation], Zi ran, ren wen yu ke

ji de gong gou jiao xiang: di er jie zhu qian xue guo ji xue shu yan tao hui lun wen ji 自然、人文與科技的共

構交響：第二屆竹塹學國際學術研討會論文集 [Co-construction of Nature, Humanities,

Science and Technology: Proceedings of the 2nd International Symposium on Bamboo Science] (Taipei: Wan juan lou, 2017). 83 Zhang Xiguo 14-15. 84 Zhang Xiguo 張系國, V Tuo Bang V托邦 [Vtopia] (Taipei: Tianxia Wenhua, 2001). The book

title V托邦 is a derivative neologism conflating “virtual reality” with “topos”. 85 This lack is partly due to “the general neglect of Renaissance and Reformation history” in Taiwan, as we will discuss further in Chapter Three, and partly due to the higher interest in modern utopias and science fiction than that in More’s Utopia. See Po-chia Hsia, “The Utopia in Chinese”, Moreana 69 (March 1981): 108.

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distant cousin, science fiction; whereas it has drawn more attention in China, often

discussed in line with a socialist emphasis, and in some particular cases, with the

Communist Party’s promotion of the “Chinese Dream”.

5 METHODOLOGIES

5.1 CONCEPTUALISING PARATEXT

Ann W. Astell believes that studying the familial epistles, verses, and marginalia that were

printed in the first four Latin editions – or in her words the parerga – is the means through

which the original rhetorical context can be recovered.86 In fact, Astell emphasises that

More himself “attached great importance to the parerga as a way of placing Utopia within its

proper rhetorical context”.87 In discussing the fictional frame of Utopia, Dominic Baker-

Smith likewise refers to these “congratulatory epistles from men of note” as parerga, which

he defines simply as “the ornaments added to the text”.88 In order not to get mixed up with

Derrida’s use of the Greek word parergon, my project uses paratext to refer to all the

accompanying items outside the main text of Utopia. The concept of “paratext”, coined by

the French narratologist Gérard Genette in Paratexts: Thresholds of Interpretation, 89 has

frequently been referred to as a spatial category, e.g. “an undefined zone”, “an intermediary

zone between the off-text and the text”, 90 and “a transitional zone between text and

beyond-text”.91 As Genette reminds us, “[t]he word zone indicates that the characteristic

feature of this aspect of the paratext is basically spatial and material”.92 This textual – or

rather, paratextual – zone is pertinent to approaching a text because it has “the capacity to

86 Ann Astell, “Rhetorical Strategy and the Fiction of Audience in More’s Utopia”, The Centennial Review 29.3 (1985): 303. 87 Astell 303-04. 88 Baker-Smith (1991) 112. 89 This volume was originally published in 1987 in French, entitled Seuils, and was translated into English in 1997. Seuils means “thresholds” and, as Richard Macksey points out, possibly also works as a tribute to Genette’s long-time publisher Editions du Seuil. See Richard Macksey’s forward to Genette’s Paratexts: Thresholds of Interpretation, trans. Jane E. Lewin (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997) xvii. 90 Genette 2. 91 Genette 407. 92 Genette 16.

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inflect the way we interpret a narrative, sometimes powerfully”. 93 To define and

conceptualise paratext, one must start from its etymological root para-, which specifies its

spatial feature of being beside or beyond. Items occupying a textual space other than the

main text become a metaphorical threshold connecting the reading experience with the

printed words. And yet, this relatively restrictive definition only depicts one dimension of

Genette’s taxonomy: peritext, or anything within the book such as prefaces, introductions,

explanatory notes, indices, chapter synopses, to name just a few. Epitext, on the other hand,

includes everything outside the volume, such as interviews, correspondence, and reviews.

In this exhaustive study that tabulates various categories of paratexts, the formula paratext

= peritext + epitext 94 is perhaps the most uncomplicated taxonomy that is based upon

spatiality within and outside the core text. There are, however, a wider array of taxonomies

that Genette postulates in his study.

Genette lists five paratextual characteristics: spatial, temporal, substantial, pragmatic,

and functional. The above classification – peritext and epitext – belongs to this spatial feature.

The temporal paratexts, on the other hand, are not as simple as during and after an author’s

lifetime, which can be termed anthumous95 and posthumous paratexts, respectively. There is

prior paratext that often appears in advertisements or announcements of an upcoming

publication; there is also original paratext, which by definition refers to the one that

“appear[s] at the same time as the text”96 but which is sometimes confused with authorial

paratext that, in most cases, is also original paratext.97 Whereas both “original” paratexts

and “anthumous” paratexts apply to those paratexts published between 1516 to 1518

which More had a hand in, I will primarily address them as “authorial paratexts” or

“Utopian paratexts” in my dissertation, so as to highlight the ones that received authorial

sanction and their closer association with Utopia at its initial stage of publication.

93 Horace Porter Abbot, ed., The Cambridge Introduction to Narrative (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008) 239. 94 Genette 5. Anthony Pym, however, finds fault with the notion of epitext because it indiscriminately covers all sorts of reception. See Pym, “Translation Research Terms: A Tentative Glossary for Moments of Perplexity and Dispute”, Translation Research Projects 3, ed. Anthony Pym (Tarragona, Spain: Intercultural Studies Group, 2011) 93. 95 Genette adopts the neologism anthumous from the French humourist and writer Alphonse Allais (1854-1905), who used this term to specify those of his works published during his lifetime. See Genette 6. 96 Genette 5. 97 Genette draws attention to the possibility that a paratext can be both original and posthumous; that is, when a text is published posthumously. See Genette 6.

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The third paratextual characteristic – substantial status – designates the “how?” or

“the mode of existence”. 98 In other words, it explores how paratexts are manifested.

Textual – or verbal – paratext is the most common manifestation. Additionally, there are

iconic paratexts like illustrations and cover art; material paratexts such as the typographical

choices made during the publication process; and factual paratexts that can be as explicit as

award-winning bestseller status (operating like an endorsement) or sometimes the “implicit

contexts”,99 the less overt ones like the generic identification of the work and the historical

period in which the book was written or published. All this constitutes the auxiliary

knowledge by which the reading experience will inevitably be influenced. These additional

three subtypes of substantial paratexts – iconic, material, and factual – will all be included

in my project, with a particular focus on iconic paratexts, to be delved into in Chapter Five.

Following the substantial paratext is the pragmatic status, i.e. the characteristics of the

communication between the sender and receiver. Genette classifies pragmatic value into

three aspects: firstly, the nature of the sender (authorial or allographic100) and receiver (public,

private, or intimate paratexts); secondly, the degree of the authority and responsibility of the

sender; thirdly, “the illocutionary force of the sender’s message”.101 The illocutionary act is

one of the three linguistic acts put forward by J. L. Austin, referring to what is meant as

opposed to what is said, i.e. the locutionary act.102 Enumerating these possible practices,

Genette states that intention, interpretation, commitment, advice, and command could all

be part of the illocutionary act, making explicit the performative power of the message.

Commonly seen in the non-authorial (or allographic in Genette’s term) prefaces within my

investigation is the interpretation of and advice on how to approach a text. While a preface

may not have sufficient authority to persuade, prefatory writing inevitably serves as a guide,

introducing a text into a different context (culture or era), based upon the translational

interpretation and/or the editorial decision of making certain messages explicit to the

public.

Discussion of illocutionary force, as Genette notes, inevitably leads to the

functionality of paratext, which is of most crucial relevance among all the paratextual

98 Genette 4. 99 Genette 7. 100 ‘Allography’ or allographic paratext is used by Genette to refer to texts that “one person writes for another person’s work”, such as a preface or review. See Genette 5. 101 Genette 8. 102 John Langshaw Austin (1911-1960) was a British linguist who developed the speech-act theory. Of the locutionary, illocutionary, and perlocutionary acts, particular attention has been placed on the second.

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characteristics.103 In fact, Genette’s explication of functionality best captures the whole

spirit of paratexts:

the paratext in all its forms is a discourse that is fundamentally heteronomous, auxiliary, and dedicated to the service of something other than itself that constitutes its raison d’être. This something is the text. Whatever aesthetic or ideological investment the author makes in a paratextual element (a “lovely title” or a preface-manifesto), whatever coquettishness or paradoxical reversal he puts into it, the paratextual element is always subordinate to “its” text, and this functionality determines the essence of its appeal and its existence.104

Paratext’s raison d’être is not just practical (in the case of physically constructing a book like

Renaissance book-making105), or aesthetic (such as enhancing marketability through a finely

designed layout), but most importantly, Genette postulates that it exists for the core text. A

paratextual item could be produced on commentary, explicatory, or manipulative grounds,

or as a result of other factors independent of the main text (such as an editorial preface

commenting on a specific book series to which the book belongs rather than commenting

on the book itself). Explicit or not, the aforementioned constitute the inextricably

intertwined connections between the text, paratext, the larger networks of meaning in

which the translations are produced, author, intermediary agent like an editorial team, and

the reader. A reader can never read a text alone; that is, a text never exists by itself. A

simple reading of a text by itself cannot account for the complexities embedded in and

generated by all the other (para)textual components.

103 Genette 407. 104 Genette 12. 105 In the early modern period, texts to be purchased were not presented in ready-made book form; instead, book purchasers often had to go to a binder to have the texts bound into one volume. As such, the paratextual materials provided crucial evidence as to where and how to properly construct a book. Depending on individual preference, book purchasers could also choose to bind different texts into one volume, making “each text a new peritext to its companions”. See Helen Smith and Louise Wilson, eds, Renaissance Paratexts (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011) 3. From this perspective, paratexts mattered in a significant way that they do not nowadays: these thresholds of interpretation were not only mediators of meanings, they catered to a necessity that is no longer present in modern book convention, that is, paratexts were constituent to the physical construction of the book as an object.

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5.2 REFRACTION VIA CULTURAL TRANSLATION AND PARATRANSLATION

Umberto Eco puts it well when he says that “translation is always a shift not between two

languages but between two cultures”.106 Translational peculiarities can be perceived as a

cultural phenomenon specific to the respective milieu. Seen in this way, Utopia should be

approached with the angle of cultural translation, rather than just a mere linguistic or

semantic transferal. As a concept, “cultural translation” has drawn attention in the field of

translation studies since George Steiner’s After Babel: Aspects of Language and Translation

(1975). Steiner defines culture as the transfer of meaning as opposed to “‘linguistic-

semantic’ and text-based” translation.107 The most authoritative text on cultural translation

is perhaps Talal Asad’s “The Concept of Cultural Translation in British Social

Anthropology” (1986).108 Asad refers to the German philosopher Rudolf Rannwitz, who

holds reservations on how a language should be translated harmoniously, especially into a

remote target culture. He challenges the premise that a translator sets out wrongly:

They want to turn Hindi, Greek, English into German instead of turning German into Hindi, Greek, English. […] The basic error of the translator is that he preserves the state in which his own language happens to be instead of allowing his language to be powerfully affected by the foreign tongue.109

In response, Asad proposes that a good translator scrutinises his or her own state of

language, instead of assuming that the fault of “an absurd-sounding translation” lies in the

source text.110 Asad observes the power relation among languages and cultures that are

being inscribed by anthropologists; such power dynamics are not individually constructed,

but are “institutionally defined”, and often manifest in a colonial or post-colonial

context. 111 Similarly, in comparing Chinese and Western translational practices via a

historical survey, André Lefevere argues that the fact China has witnessed only three

106 Umberto Eco, Experiences in Translation, trans. Alastair McEwen (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2001) 17. 107 Warren Boutcher, “From Cultural Translation to Cultures of Translation? Early Modern Readers, Sellers and Patrons”, The Culture of Translation in Early Modern England and France, 1500-1660, eds Tania Demetriou and Rowan Tomlinson (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015) 22. Cf. George Steiner, After Babel: Aspects of Language and Translation (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1975). 108 Talal Asad, “The Concept of Cultural Translation in British Social Anthropology”, Writing Culture: The Poetics and Politics of Ethnography, eds James Clifford and George E. Marcus (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986) 141-64. 109 Quoted in Asad 157. 110 Asad 157. 111 Asad 157-58.

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developments of translational strategies in history reflects how China saw “the Other”.112

That “the Other was not considered very important” can be attributed to two factors,

namely that China deemed itself central and that it was a “relatively homogenous”

culture.113 This partially explains, among other factors, why the first Mandarin Utopia did

not see the light until as late as 1935.

My readings of Mandarin Utopias find resonance in Asad’s analogy with the work

of an anthropologist and psychoanalyst. Quoting a long passage from David Pocock on

social anthropologists’ nature as author-translators, Asad suggests a new take on the

author-translator collaboration: “if the anthropological translator, like the analyst, has final

authority in determining the subject’s meanings – it is then the former becomes the real

author of the latter.”114 Viewed from this perspective, several of the translators shall be

considered not just as collaborators in More’s Utopia – though not the real authors either –

but co-authors of its modern versions who have, through their own refractions, added or

subtracted layers of meaning to the original text.

While Genette does not discuss the relationship between translation and paratext in

depth, he has inspired subsequent researchers in the field of translation studies as well as

other disciplines such as media studies to explore this intricate interconnection.115 Şehnaz

Tahir Gürçağlar, for instance, brings up the fundamental baseline of the analogy between

translation and paratext: “Considering translation as a derivative activity always based on

another text that is chronologically anterior to it makes translation a commentary on the

original text, i.e. a paratextual feature presenting the original.”116 Expanding from this line

of thought, I concur that translation is a subtle act of commentary; even more so, it is

relaying and commenting on the original with other textual as well as non-textual

112 André Lefevere, “Chinese and Western Thinking on Translation”, Constructing Cultures: Essays on Literary Translation, eds Susan Bassnett and André Lefevere (Clevedon: Multilingual Matters, 1998) 13. Those three developmental phases are: during the second to the seventh centuries when the Buddhist scriptures were translated; beginning in the sixteenth century when the Christian scriptures were translated; and starting from the nineteenth century when Western thought and literary texts were introduced and translated. 113 Lefevere (1998) 13-14. The way China viewed the rest of the world was like, adds Lefevere, how classical Greece was not interested in “the Other”. 114 Asad 162. 115 For instance, Şehnaz Tahir Gürçağlar adopts Genette’s theory as a starting point and investigates the paratextual influence on Turkish popular literature, with special focus on authorship, originality, and anonymity. Contrary to how others believe translation should be read as paratext, Gürçağlar contends that this view is in fact a defective one because it limits the scope of translation research with an imbalanced focus on the source text. See Gürçağlar, “What Texts Don’t Tell: The Uses of Paratexts in Translation Research”, Crosscultural Transgressions: Research Models in Translation Studies II: Historical and Ideological Issues, ed. Theo Hermans (Manchester: St. Jerome, 2002) 59. 116 Gürçağlar 46.

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components, through which a text is re-presented and refracted. This brings us to a less

often discussed terminology, paratranslation, which Anthony Pym defines as the study of

translation “in constant relation to material supports, typography, images, voices, and the

extensive repercussions of paratexts within societies”.117 Or as Valerie Pellatt defines it in

broad terms, paratranslation is used “to denote the varied manifestations of translated

paratext”.118 This notion is closely associated with paratext itself.

Instead of looking at translation and paratext separately, my project with regard to

Mandarin Utopias is best understood from a paratranslational perspective, i.e. that the

written, iconic, material, and factual paratexts all constitute to the shaping of Utopia, and

that a translated work should be considered in not just the target text and paratexts, but all

the accompanying apparatus, including material manifestation, editorial intervention, and

the respective milieu in which the publication appears.

6 DISSERTATION STRUCTURE

In order to study how Utopia has travelled into the Mandarin ethos, I take a research path

divided into four stages, which correspond to four chapters. This Utopian voyage begins

with the basics: an overview of the publication history of its early modern Latin editions

published during More’s lifetime (1516-1519) and Ralph Robinson’s two English

translations (1551 and 1556). It is then followed by contextualising Utopia within

Renaissance rhetoric, in particularly by examining its two narrative devices, fiction and

dialogue. These two devices need to be applied both pragmatically and metaphorically, as a

channel to access Utopia, which was to become the epitome of More’s divided mind, best

illustrated by Stephen Greenblatt’s conceptualisation of self-fashioning into More’s role-

playing and More’s reflections on its limitations, or “his own incompleteness”.119 Fiction

and dialogue in Utopia are chosen for my analysis because they contribute to what I believe

is the structuring force of this narrative, ars est celare artem. The idea of ars est celare artem,

117 Pym 93. Paratranslation was developed by the School of Vigo, and is the founding stone of the new programme Translation and Paratranslation (T&P) at the University of Vigo. See José Yuste Prías, “Paratextual Elements in Translation: Paratranslating Titles in Children’s Literature”, Translation Peripheries: Paratextual Elements in Translation, eds Gil-Bajardí, Pilar Orero, and Sara Rovira-Esteva. (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 2012) 118. 118 Valerie Pellatt, “Packaging the Product: A Case Study of Verbal and Non-Verbal Paratext in Chinese-English Translation”, The Journal of Specialised Translation 20 (2013): 86. 119 Greenblatt 33.

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“art lies in concealing art”, that art is achieved indirectly, is not a concept novel to Thomas

More. This force, that structures the utopian narrative, is achieved primarily via More’s use

of fiction and dialogue, contributing to the indirection without which any reading would

end up being too straightforward or one-sided. Or, in More’s case, it is the force used to

express his ideal vision indirectly. By reading Utopia paratextually, to see how Utopia has

been refracted through paratranslation, readers access Utopian paratexts as an extension of

the dialogue that was the agent of More’s self-fashioning.

The second phase of this Utopian journey travels to Chinese soil. It begins with the

first introduction of this concept into Mandarin via sources such as dictionary entries as

well as translations of other English political works. I then move on to discussing certain

traditional concepts articulating an ideal realm, in the hope of seeing how the reading of

Utopia may have been influenced by, or refracted through, the knowledge of archetypes. I

look into two particular concepts, which I term the Chinese counterparts of Utopia: the

pastoral Peach Blossom Spring and the political Da Tong [the Great Unity].

The third phase centres around Mandarin Utopias: the translation history and the

target texts themselves. This chapter introduces the translation history of the fourteen

standalone Mandarin editions, their styles, material presentations, features, as well as a few

mistranslations. The second half of Chapter Three employs close reading to compare the

translational variants among the Mandarin texts. Instrumental case study120 is the primary

method used to examine More’s invented names and a select passage: the peroration, where

“the most dramatic moment in all of Utopia occurs […] when the reader finds out whether

or not [Hythloday] succeeds with the most promising audiences, More and Giles”.121 A

general pattern is divulged by looking at how names have been rendered, and a different

Utopia than More had intended is discerned from certain mistranslations, especially in the

peroration.

The last phase tackles Utopia’s afterlives, by which I refer to its immediate textual

and visual afterlives (paratexts). Chapter Four is divided into More’s paratexts and Utopia’s

Mandarin paratexts, the latter of which include allographic prefaces and iconic paratexts.

The Chapter begins by analysing the significance, function, and effect of paratexts in the

120 Contrary to the intrinsic case study which is based primarily on one particular case with a descriptive approach, an instrumental case study requires interpretation and is “intended to provide insights into a wider issue” and “facilitates understanding of something else”. See Hossein Tavakoli, A Dictionary of Research Methodology and Statistics in Applied Linguistics (Tehran: Rahnama Press, 2012) 46-47. 121 Astell 306.

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early modern Latin editions that received authorial sanction, in the light of their

distinguished bifocal feature, serio-jocularity, as well as what their inclusion in, or exclusion

from, the Mandarin editions tells readers about Utopia’s textual journey. To be precise, I

divide the analyses of paratexts (both authorial and non-authorial) into three groups. In the

first group, I examine the authorial paratexts included in the Mandarin editions, which

allows me to understand how Utopia was meant to be read in its original milieu and how it

has been framed in a new context. I show much has been lost and reproduced, as well as

the effects of this on the reading experience. The second group includes the translators’

prefaces to respective Mandarin editions (part of which is explored in Chapter Three, but it

will be thematically discussed in Chapter Four): the examination of these translational or

allographic items enables me to understand reader response on the level of the translators.

To be specific, I examine: 1) whether or how fiction and dialogue, the two devices I

emphasise in my dissertation, have been discussed; 2) whether or not the paratextual

apparatus is explained; 3) how far the Chinese archetypes delineating an ideal world have

been used to portray – or to equate with – Utopia.

The third group engages with visual dimensions such as book cover and

illustrations. I read them both by the quantity and range of iconic paratexts included in

each edition and by a close reading of the non-authorial illustrations, discerning how

Utopia’s afterlives have been disseminated visually. My findings demonstrate how the

concept of utopia has thrived in both textual and non-textual, academic and non-academic

discourses. It is my intention to go back to the roots, Thomas More’s Utopia, and study how

this little golden libellus has been transplanted into Mandarin. All this will suggest that there

is no final phase of our Utopian expedition, that it travels on, as it is reincarnated through

refraction and through Utopia’s afterlives. This journey moves forward, and does not circle

back as Louis Marin suggests, because the utopian propensity to strive for the better is

universal, and all the contemporary texts appropriating the concept of utopia are a

corroboration of readers being on the utopian equation to produce, in Moser’s term, their

syntheses, the re-imaginations of a better alternative expressed in whichever format it comes

in. In this sense, the best image representing utopia is perhaps not of a circle but of a

spiral.

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CHAPTER ONE.

CONTEXTUALISING UTOPIA: PUBLICATION HISTORY AND RHETORIC

In order to locate Utopia in its original context, our Utopian journey commences with the

publication history of the early modern Latin editions that received authorial sanction, as

well as Ralph Robinson’s two English translations. This chapter then examines Utopia in the

light of Renaissance rhetoric, investigating More’s use of fiction and dialogue, both as

narrative devices and as philosophical concepts operating as a means of enquiring into the

alternatives, and of presenting More’s double-mindedness. The dynamics added to the

reading experiences are further amplified by the paratextual apparatus accompanying

Utopia’s publication, from its first appearance in 1516 down to the modern era in various

languages. The chapter then discusses More’s self-fashioning, in the light of paratexts as

extensions of the Utopian dialogue that voice More’s differing opinions. The first phase of

this Utopian sojourn, then, not only contextualises Utopia, but more importantly

substantiates how fiction, dialogue, and paratexts are integral to the shaping of Utopia, so

that neither can be considered without.

1 PUBLICATION HISTORY OF THE EARLY EDITIONS

Utopia is the brainchild of Thomas More’s observation of, critique of, and aspirations for

early modern England. The work was conceived in 1515 during More’s diplomatic mission

to Flanders; the mission was suspended in July but he did not return to England until

October. Those additional months spent on the Continent, during which time More was

relatively free from official duties, facilitated his composition of Utopia.122 The manuscript

was sent to Erasmus, who, along with the collaboration of other humanists, accelerated the

publication of Utopia by the end of 1516. The first edition of Utopia was printed in

Louvain by Dirk Martens; 123 with the growing popularity of the printing press, Utopia

reached a wider readership through re-publication in several other European countries as

well as its translations into the early modern vernaculars, namely German in 1524, Italian in

122 Cambridge 1995 (Utopia) xx. 123 The printer Dirk Martens is also known as Thierry Martin. Here I adopt the spelling used in Cambridge Utopia.

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1548, French in 1550, English in 1551, Dutch in 1553, and Spanish in 1643. In a study that

examines the Mandarin translations of Utopia, an overview of the publication history of

Utopia’s Latin editions and its first English translations is equally relevant in order to situate

the analysis in context.

1.1 EARLY MODERN LATIN EDITIONS, 1516-1519

The Latin editions of Utopia were in print from 1516 until 1777.124 The earliest Latin

editions include: Louvain 1516, Paris 1517, Basel 1518 (March and November), and

Florence 1519. The Louvain edition was printed by Dirk Martens, with Peter Giles being

the corrector and editor. This first printed edition, and logically the subsequent editions,

differed tremendously from its manuscript form in that a number of paratextual items were

appended. In describing the first four Latin editions, the Cambridge editors note three

points that distinguished the printed book from More’s manuscript: firstly, it contains a

collection of commendations solicited by Erasmus; secondly, a series of marginalia was

added by Erasmus and/or Giles; thirdly, some changes were made to the main text (by

Erasmus and possibly also by Giles), the most notable example of which being the

Graecisation of the proper nouns.125 Giles, a humanist and city clerk of Antwerp, is one of

the three interlocutors who participates in More’s imaginary dialogue in Utopia. The fact

that Giles was a real historical figure who at the same time served as a fictional character in

Utopia was one of the very first strategies that aimed at presenting Utopia as a true travel

account.

Not completely satisfied with the first edition, Erasmus asked More for a corrected

copy to be either printed in Paris or Basel, with the final decision being Paris. This time the

leading French printer, who was also Erasmus’s friend, Gilles de Gourmont, served as the

printer, while Thomas Lupset, to whom Guillaume Budé addressed a prefatory epistle that

appeared in this 1517 edition, was responsible for editing the proofs. Yet again Erasmus

124 Unless otherwise specified, the major reference for the discussion of the Latin editions is the Introduction written by David Harris Sacks for his edited volume of Utopia. See David Harris Sacks, ed. Utopia, trans. Ralph Robinson, 1556 (Boston and New York: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 1999) ix. 125 Cambridge Utopia (1995) 271. George M. Logan, who provided the appendix for this Cambridge edition, offers two important instances where the proper nouns were changed from Latin to Graeco-based: the title (from Nusquama to Utopia) and the capital city of Utopia (from Mentirano to Amaurotico).

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was not at all satisfied with this corrected second edition. 126 The concern for better

representation – literarily and artistically – urged them to turn to the prominent scholar-

printer Johannes Froben, who then produced two editions in Basel, in March and

November 1518. Froben’s books were noted for their aesthetic values and visual

presentation, 127 which were reflected in not only their frontispieces but also, in this

particular case, the paratextual materials that the Basel editions carried. For instance, the

Utopian alphabets and commendatory verses, omitted in the 1517 Paris edition, were now

included again. The title page was designed by Hans Holbein, and a new woodcut map of

the island Utopia128 replaced the previous, much cruder map, whose artist is unidentified.129

All these aspects give the 1518 edition an aesthetical impeccability that best represented

More’s literary design; that is, an intellectual puzzle awaiting to be explored, resolved, and

possibly reacted to, through the reading of its texts and paratexts.

Not all translations use the same source text, but the most authoritative edition is

the March 1518 Basel edition, which was based on the 1516 edition, with more complete

ancillary items.130 The November 1518 edition is usually left out because it is “a complete

and close resetting of the March edition” and any changes were possibly made without

More’s authorisation.131 Following Froben’s model, Filippo Giunta’s heirs printed the 1519

edition in Florence; this time, however, none of the paratexts of the first edition were

present. 132 Interestingly enough, the 1519 Florence edition was printed alongside a

collection of classical texts and humanist works, including translations of Lucian’s works –

126 Vibeke Roggen, “A Protean Text: Utopia in Latin, 1516-1631”, Thomas More’s Utopia in Early Modern Europe: Paratexts and Contexts, ed. Terence Cave (Manchester: Manchester Unviersity Press, 2008) 15. See also Cambridge Utopia (1995) 272. 127 Roggen 15. 128 McCutcheon, My Dear Peter : The “Ars Poetica” and Hermeneutics for More’s Utopia (Angers: Moreana, 1983)10; Roggen 15. 129 Sacks, ed., Utopia (1999) 78. 130 Cambridge Utopia (1995) 273. 131 Cambridge Utopia (1995) 273, quoted from Edward Surtz and J. H. Hexter, eds, The Yale Complete Works of St. Thomas More. Vol. IV (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1965) cxc. Hereafter CW. 132 A new item was included in this edition, an epistle from Erasmus to Richard Foxe, who founded Corpus Christi College, Oxford, in 1516. The first English translator Ralph Robinson entered Corpus in 1536 and, as Terence Cave indicates, More’s and Erasmus’s works were studied there “as models of humanist Latin composition”. See Cave, “The English Translation: Thinking About the Commonwealth”, Thomas More’s Utopia in Early Modern Europe, ed. Cave 88. A link between Utopia and Corpus Christi College is first traceable in this prefatory item of the 1519 Florence Latin edition; in the second English translation of Utopia (1556), Corpus was printed in the title page as an introduction to the translator: “Raphe Robynson, sometime fellowe of Corpus Christi College in Oxford” (replacing “citizen and goldsmith” in the 1551 English title page). See “The English Paratexts”, esp. 205-10.

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Luciani opuscula – and it fundamentally conformed to the Basel editions.133 Fox observes

that More’s “encounter with Lucian was absolutely crucial to the development of his

mature vision and its literary and philosophical consequences were long lasting”.134 Indeed,

More was known for being the translator of Lucian’s work far before Utopia earned him

due reputation,135 and all this provides the implicit context for this 1519 edition. The fact

that instead of a volume of its own, the Florence edition was appended to other classical

texts rendered it a paratext of other core texts and thus may not contribute much to

research findings. No original Utopian paratexts were included with this publication; and

the fact that Utopia was placed at the very end means it might have been taken – for its

contemporaneous Italian readers – as “an afterthought” to other major classical works.136

The Cambridge editors suggest that “the relations of the first four [editions …] are

complex and each of these editions contains significant unique readings”. 137 Elizabeth

McCutcheon offers an overview of the early modern Latin editions and comments that

More and Erasmus “oversaw the preparation of the earliest editions”, namely the four

editions from 1516 to 1518. The concern for authorial sanction is undeniably a crucial

factor – though not always applicable – in considering the authenticity and faithfulness of a

translated work. In a work as convoluted as Utopia, a translation with authorial sanction

serves as a point of reference, thereby the preferred edition is the 1518 edition, which has

the most abundant paratextual apparatus.138

133 Cambridge Utopia (1995) 270. 134 Fox 35. 135 R. Bracht Branham states that More’s translations of Lucian had been published in fourteen editions by 1535, compared to six editions of his Utopia. See Branham, “Utopian Laughter: Lucian and Thomas More”, Moreana 86 (July 1985): 23. 136 Roggen 16. 137 Cambridge Utopia (1995) 270. 138 While this may hold true for the English renderings, however, it is not necessarily so for Mandarin Chinese, a language that is distinctively different from the Latin language family. The fact that the first Mandarin edition did not appear until as late as 1935, as well as several of the socio-cultural particulars, may have rendered the Cambridge editors’ said assertion less apt. To begin with, Latin has never been a mainstream subject of study in China or Taiwan. A quick look at all the translators involved in the process of translation reveals that very few had professional training in Latin; for Dai Liuling and Song Meihua who claimed to have referred to Latin editions, they were or are not Latin specialists, and hence the nuances from the Latin original may well likely not have been detected. There has already been abundant research conducted on the earliest Latin editions of Utopia. It is possible that the translators who claimed to have referred to the Latin text were in fact making use of the findings from these secondary sources to form and polish their own translated texts.

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1.2 RALPH ROBINSON’S ENGLISH TRANSLATIONS, 1551 AND 1556

Ralph Robinson, whose biographical background is obscure, was the first to produce an

English translation of Utopia. 139 Despite the critiques it received, Robinson’s edition

remained dominant for Anglophone readers for over a century, so much so that James

Binder contends that Utopia reaches the English-speaking readership primarily “via the

Robinson detour”, until Bishop Gilbert Burnet attempted another rendition in 1684.140

Robinson contributed two editions in 1551 and 1556, both published by Abraham Vele, but

printed by Steven Mierdman and Richard Tottel, respectively. David Harris Sacks provides

a concise account of the people involved in the publication of these two earliest

renditions.141 The translator, Robinson himself, as well as the publisher and printer of the

1551 edition, were all “Protestants working in Reformation London”,142 whereas the printer

of the 1556 edition was Richard Tottel, an Englishman – and more importantly a Catholic

– who overtook Mierdman’s job most likely due to the changing religious climate of Tudor

England. The change in editorial personnel reflects the shift in the socio-political milieu.

This reaffirms how general context may shape the process of textual production. Indeed,

the fact that the 1551 edition was published during the reign of Edward VI (who oversaw

Protestantism being recognised as the state religion) and the 1556 edition during the reign

of Mary I (who turned against Protestantism toward Catholicism) offers the implicit context

which serves, in Genette’s taxonomy, as the factual paratext143 to Utopia’s earliest two English

translations.

139 It should be noted that More himself was opposed to translating Utopia into English; hence Utopia was not available in English until 1551, after several other vernacular versions were published. See Lyman Sargent, Utopianism: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010) 2. Reed Edwin Peggram suggests that this phenomenon is like other aspects of sixteenth-century literary history, where “England lagged behind the Continent on the one hand, and on the other hand threatened to rival her sister cultures in spite of her tardiness” and that Robinson’s translation is a demonstration of England’s “belated precocity”. See Peggram, “The First French and English Translations of Sir Thomas More’s Utopia”, Modern Language Review 100 (2005): 51-52. 140 James Binder, “More’s Utopia in English: A Note on Translation”, Modern Language Notes 62.6 (1947): 370. Likewise, Elizabeth McCutcheon suggests that Robinson’s translation “had acquired the status of a classical text before 1900”. See Elizabeth McCutcheon, “Review of Thomas More, Utopia, translated, edited, and introduced by Dominic Baker-Smith”, Moreana 50.193-94 (2013): 274-75 [hereafter “Review Essay”]. 141 Sacks, ed., Utopia ix. Sacks reports that the Robinson version was published four more times before 1640, in 1556, 1597, 1624, and 1639. However, studies have concentrated on the 1551 and 1556 editions, for these two are the ones with more individual research value. Unless otherwise specified, reference to these two English translations is taken from Sacks’ introduction. 142 Sacks, ed., Utopia 59. 143 Genette 33-34.

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This very first English rendition was nothing like its elaborate Latin cousins, in that

it had almost none of the original paratexts – not even the quatrain written in the Utopian

alphabet – nor the marginalia, which only appeared in the subsequent 1556 edition. In fact,

the only supplementary item added was a dedication to William Cecil, who was a

schoolmate of Robinson and from whom the translator had received financial aid. 144

Commenting on this “simple” and almost manuscript-like 1551 edition, David Sacks

suggests that it was done out of economic reasons, in that the publisher Vele aimed to keep

the price down so as to facilitate the book’s circulation, to the rich and the “middling sort”

alike.145 This line of reasoning may very likely be applicable, given the milieu in which the

translation was produced. Yet in doing so, the 1551 English Utopia was reduced to a travel

narrative suggestive of sardonic messages, and failed to make itself a complete cultural

artefact that could have represented More’s legacy.

While the 1551 edition was a “bare-bones effort”146 which was fundamentally a

reproduction of More’s manuscript, namely the two books of Utopia without the prefatory

epistles contributed by More’s coterie, the 1556 edition was a much-improved version, in its

correction, presentation, and appendages, that altogether helped reinforce the Utopian

discourse and image that More wanted to get across to his readers. Interestingly, the shift in

the political landscape that had an effect on the replacement of the first printer was also

mirrored in the changing of non-authorial paratexts in these two editions. With the

ascension of Queen Mary in 1553, William Cecil was no longer the principal secretary. To

avoid any possible persecution from the connection with Cecil, Robinson removed this

dedication; in place of this, there was an epistle to the general reader apologising for the

errors made in the first edition.147

David Sacks also lists events occurring during the respective years in which

Robinson’s translations were published. The first edition saw the light during a year of bad

144 By the time Robinson sought Cecil’s financial support, More’s name was already controversial due to his schism. Robinson’s choice was deliberate, knowing Cecil’s penchant for the writings of citizenship and governance. In fact, Cecil had already sponsored a number of writers and was in close contact with Sir Thomas Chaloner, who translated Encomium Moriae in 1549. It only seemed natural that William Cecil would offer his patronage to the translation of a work whose nature had been strongly associated with Encomium Moriae. See Sacks, ed., Utopia 60. 145 Sacks, ed., Utopia 62. 146 Sacks, ed., Utopia x. 147 The change reflects the status anxiety that Neil Rhodes detects in English Renaissance translations, whose paratextual items often witnessed a process of negotiation between socio-cultural statuses. See Neil Rhodes, “Status Anxiety and English Renaissance Translation”, Renaissance Paratexts, eds Helen Smith and Louise Wilson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011, 2014) 108.

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harvest, 1551, also the year that witnessed “one of the worst outbreaks of social unrest

since Jack Cade’s Rebellion”.148 1556, the year in which the second edition was published,

continued to experience rocketing food prices, with an even worse harvest. A major revolt

against enclosure – an unfair policy that was also portrayed in Utopia – might have been

another catalyst for the re-publication of Robinson’s translation in 1597. The trade

depression and high unemployment rate in 1624 accompanied another appearance of

Utopia in the same year. “This publication pattern”, Sacks argues, “strongly suggests that

Utopia in translation had come to be viewed, at least by publishers, primarily as a work

speaking to the social, and especially the agrarian, problems of the age.”149 All these are not

just historical events; they reflect an interaction between text and context – in this case the

factual paratexts – that contributes not just to how a reader experiences a text, but to how a

publisher sees the need to re-publish an existing work.

2 RENAISSANCE RHETORIC

Elizabeth McCutcheon, like Dominic Baker-Smith, understands that More’s deliberate

choice to compose Utopia in Latin lies in his fine grasp of the potential readership and of

rhetoric.150 Rhetoric was part of the Studia Humanitatis; hence learned readers would have

few difficulties discerning the subtleties in Utopia, “a self-consciously rhetorical work”, as

Ann Astell calls it.151 Rhetoric as a general term is a means of persuasion, the art of

eloquence. It was a major component of the Renaissance curriculum. The Renaissance

itself represents a rebirth; in humanistic terms, it stands for the revival of classical rhetoric,

among other things.152 Studia Humanitatis, a Ciceronian phrase, designates a study of the

148 Sacks, ed., Utopia 67. 149 Sacks, ed., Utopia 68. 150 McCutcheon, “Review Essay” 281; see also McCutcheon, “Denying the Contrary: More’s Use of Litotes in the Utopia”, Moreana 31-32 (Nov 1971): 107. 151 Astell 302. 152 The Medieval Trivium includes rhetoric, logic, and grammar. This is also what Sister Mariam Joseph calls the three arts of language. Grammar was generally treated under the works of rhetoric and logic in Tudor England. See Joseph, Rhetoric in Shakespeare’s Time: Literary Theory of Renaissance Europe (New York: Harcourt, 1947, rpt. 1962) 4. John of Salisbury (c.1115-1180), author of Metalogicon (1159), defends logic in a broader category, treating the entire trivium as logic. See M. A. R. Habib, A History of Literary Criticism: From Plato to the Present (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2005) 183.

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humanities that covers grammar, rhetoric, poetry, history, and moral philosophy.153 Alerting

us to the fact that this term has been applied indiscriminately to scholars who preached

“vaguely defined human values”, 154 Paul Oskar Kristeller specifies that Renaissance

humanists were a group of highly trained scholars who either taught or learned Studia

Humanitatis. In Thomas More’s case, the five branches of humanist studies manifested

themselves in different phases of his life and the works he engaged in.155 For instance, in

the field of grammar and history, More composed commendatory verses for grammar

textbooks, and gave lectures on Augustine’s City of God, in which Roman history was

among the major themes. His abundant knowledge of history, especially humanist

historiography, culminated in his History of Richard III, which More wrote in both Latin and

English but never managed to complete. In terms of rhetoric, among many of his other

achievements, More was a noted public orator, giving speeches on ceremonial occasions

such as welcoming Charles V on his London visit. As for poetry, More wrote both Latin

and English poems, the latter of which included some verse translations of Giovanni Pico

della Mirandola’s Latin prose pieces.156 Moral philosophy, to which political philosophy

belongs, is exemplified by his Utopia.

These disciplines are the basis of Renaissance philology. While both cover rhetoric

as part of their respective curricula, it is important to differentiate between what rhetoric

meant in the medieval trivium and in the Studia Humanitatis. Renaissance humanism overall

represents “a series of slow changes in the intellectual reorientation of European culture”,

specifically from metaphysics to epistemology, from viewing wisdom as “a contemplative

virtue” to viewing it as “virtuous action”, and from a quest for an absolute to a relative

good.157 The shift was reflected in the “other-worldliness” of the medieval scholastics to

153 Kristeller (1980) 5. Rhetoric in this study shall not be confused with ancient rhetoric, which underlined the juridical and the political, nor with the modern notion of “radical rhetoric” that highlights the propagandist connotation of this phrase; it shall also not be considered “the equivalent of empty rhetoric”, where excessive ornateness merely reflects pretence. See Kristeller (1979) 213, 242-43. 154 Kristeller (1980) 5. Referring to Kristeller, the Cambridge editors of Utopia remind readers that it was not about any specific philosophical position as there was no one commonly shared position; instead, Renaissance humanism was “a particular scholarly orientation”. See Cambridge Utopia (1995) xviii. 155 See Kristeller (1980) 6-7, 18. See also Cambridge Utopia (1995) xix. 156 More was primarily remembered as the translator and adaptor of Gianfranco Mirandola’s Life of Pico della Mirandola, published in 1510. 157 Walter Davis, “Thomas More’s Utopia as Fiction”, The Centennial Review 24.3 (1980): 250.

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the “this-worldliness” of Renaissance humanism.158 Rhetoric in the medieval trivium differs

from that of the Studia Humanitatis in that the former was criticised as abstract, “[having]

no true utility or direct relevance for human life”,159 whereas the latter was intended to

serve a good cause, despite how relative this concept could be. Distinguishing true

eloquence and sophistry, Hanna Gray observes,

true eloquence, according to the humanists, could arise only out of a harmonious union between wisdom and style; its aim was to guide men toward virtue and worthwhile goals, not to mislead them for vicious or trivial purposes. It was this conception of eloquence which the humanists placed in opposition to scholastic philosophy.160

Similarly, Walter Davis, in commenting on how rhetoric became an essential vehicle in the

Renaissance for moving people towards “virtuous action”, discusses the intersection of

wisdom and style: “Philosophy became ‘literary,’ and in many circles, literature became

almost as highly valued as philosophy.” 161 This shift in the essence of rhetoric was

exemplified in Thomas More, who demonstrated his true eloquence through his prolific

writings as well as lectures, as part of his instruments of engaging with current affairs.

The significance of Renaissance rhetoric manifests itself in the fundamental

generic presentation of Utopia, in which two of the three classical (rhetorical) genera are

embodied.162 Utopia is divided into two books. Book One, composed after Book Two,

consists of deliberative rhetoric. This type of oratory is usually a debate about policy or a

course of action, and is often presented via Platonic or Ciceronian dialogues. Expressing

two or multiple opinions in dialogic form, deliberative oratory is designed to persuade or

dissuade without particularly favouring either side of the dialogue.163 Book Two, composed

158 Habib attributes the causes of shifting from other-worldliness to this-worldliness to economic and political factors, namely the growing of trade and manufacture, the decline of the Holy Roman Empire and the papacy, to name but the obvious. See Habib 230. 159 Hanna Gray, “Renaissance Humanism: The Pursuit of Eloquence”, Journal of the History of Ideas 24.4 (1963): 501. 160 Gray 498-99. 161 Davis 251. 162 The three classical (rhetorical) genera are deliberative, demonstrative, and judicial, the last of which is devoted primarily to legal controversy and civil suits. Kristeller also reminds us that, unlike ancient rhetoric, Renaissance rhetoric was not mainly about political or judiciary oratory. See Kristeller (1979) 242. 163 Three common topoi of deliberative rhetoric include honestas (honour or morality), utilitas (utility or expediency), and necessitas (or “possible” in Quintilian terms). See John F. Tinkler, “Praise and Advice: Rhetorical Approaches in More’s Utopia and Machiavelli’s The Prince”, The Sixteenth Century Journal 19.2 (1988): 191.

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first and not in dialogic form,164 consists of demonstrative rhetoric. This is usually a speech

of praise or dispraise, and can typically be seen in praising civitas. Here the Second Book

epitomises demonstrative oratory in praise of the Utopian commonwealth. 165 In fact,

demonstrative oratory is usually more “allied to exaggeration and even fiction”.166 John F.

Tinkler therefore arrives at a fine line of reasoning that captures the rhetorical form of

Utopia: “When More switches from the deliberative mode of Book I to the demonstrative

mode of Book II, he switches from the realm of realistic deliberative advice to the realm

of hyperbole and fiction: the fictional quality of his Utopia or ‘Noplace’ is quite

conventional for demonstrative oration.”167 This analogy is pertinent not only because it

finely illustrates the compositional transition, but also because it brings up the other equally,

if not more, crucial element in the whole rhetorical structure of Utopia, namely the fiction.

3 MODES OF NARRATIVE

Rosalie Colie calls Utopia a mixture of genres that includes various literary topoi and

conventions.168 While different scholars have their own understanding of the nature of

Utopia’s mixed genres169 – though without major variations – A. R. Heiserman indicates that

this is what the Roman rhetoricians called satura, “a genre which mixes dialogues,

autobiography, fable, history, etc., to criticise human affairs”. 170 Even though not an

autobiography, Utopia does contain a high level of self-referentiality;171 while not a fable per

164 While most scholars recognise it as a monologue, or as Kristeller calls it “a dialogue only in name”, Edward Surtz argues that it should not be called monologue but a “one-sided dialogue”. See The Yale Complete Works of St. Thomas More, eds. Edward Surtz and J. H. Hexter (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1963) (hereafter CW) cxxxix. Quoted in Scheock 26. 165 George M. Logan, The Meaning of More’s Utopia (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1983) 130n92. 166 Tinkler 192-93. 167 Tinkler 193. 168 Rosalie Colie, The Resources of Kind: Genre-Theory in the Renaissance, ed. Barbara K. Lewalski (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1973) 19, 76-102. Quoted in Marina Leslie, Renaissance Utopia and the Problem of History (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1998) 2. 169 For instance, Marina Leslie suggests that in composing Utopia, More “includes” literary conventions such as “imaginary voyage, speculum principis, model commonwealth, dialogue, satire, paradoxical encomium, epideictic oratory”, among others. See Leslie 2. 170 Heiserman 11-14. 171 Even though Utopia is in no way More’s autobiography, McCutcheon points out that there is a sense of self-referentiality implicit throughout the whole narrative. See McCutcheon, “Puns, Paradoxes, and Heuristic Inquiry: The ‘De Servis’ Section of More’s Utopia”, Moreana 51.201-02 (2015): 93. See also Kinney, who, in commenting on the compositional sequence of Utopia, suggests

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se, the fictive element of fable is identified in Utopia’s “feignness”. Beginning with historical

events and continuing on to a dialogue, Utopia is a critique of More’s contemporary society.

All these elements together place Utopia in the realm of satura. Satura refers to a medley –

“a medley of metres, or of prose and verse” – but the first application of it to literature is

not certain. 172 Henry Nettleship suggests that its connection to literature might be

metaphorical and that satura was first used as a term “for a dramatic performance or a story

which was a medley of scenes and incidents”.173 It was only until the time of Quintus

Ennius (239-169 BC), who was “usually accounted Rome’s first writer of satire”,174 that

satura began to be developed into literature or, in Nettleship’s words, “a literary luxury [that

was] capable of a tone somewhat more serious than would have been suited for the stage

and the general public”.175 As far as the stage is concerned, one of the constant features of

satura is that it is “a description of isolated scenes, but never contains a regular plot”.176 The

other feature that has been preserved is that there is “a strongly-marked personal element”,

of which dialogue is an integral part.177 Satura underwent some changes in the hands of the

Roman satirist Lucilius (c.180-c.103 BC), who introduced the element of invective into this

genre. Lucilius’s satura was loaded with the influence of Greek comedy, in which personal

attack was prominent. 178 Horace criticised Lucilius for maintaining only the invective

element of the old comedy but failing to retain the jocular quality. In fact, Horace’s Satires

were “intended as a protest against that of Lucilius” in that the former left out invective,

the essential part of this genre introduced by Lucilius.179

These two constant features of satura find resonance in More’s Utopia. Book One is

relayed in a dialogic form, whereas the whole of Utopia is invective in disguise. How

Nettleship describes the spirit of the true satura likewise applies to Utopia:

that Book Two was intended as a work in its entirety and that it was “a self-contained and self-referential oration in praise of the ideal commonwealth”. See Arthur Kinney, “Rhetoric as Poetic: Humanist Fiction in the Renaissance”, ELH 43.4 (1976): 427. 172 Henry Nettleship, The Roman Satura: Its Original Form in Connection with Its Literary Development (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1878) 3. 173 Nettleship 3. 174 Kirk Freudenburg, “Introduction: Roman Satire”, The Cambridge Companion to Roman Satire (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005) 2. 175 Nettleship 5. Quintus Ennius was the Roman dramatist and epic poet who cultivated Roman literature that was strongly influenced by the Greek model, best known for the Annales. 176 Nettleship 17. 177 Nettleship 16-17. 178 Nettleship 6-7. 179 Nettleship 14.

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The speaker does not preach at or abuse, but describes and reflects upon the life of his contemporaries, and that with a mellow and genial wisdom. Like the fool in the tragedy, he stands at the centre of things, professing to see through imposture, to read things as they are, to expose the vanity of human wishes and the weakness or hypocrisy of human pretensions: above all things he is a plain speaker who will tell the world the truth to its face.180

Raphael Hythloday, the speaker of nonsense, is this wise fool that stands at the fringe of all

vices, observing, exposing, and ridiculing with his vain chatter, disguised in More’s

meticulously devised fictional frame.

3.1 FICTION IN UTOPIA

Either as a political satire or a jeu d’esprit literary piece, Utopia in contemporary reading is

considered to be fiction because the Utopian island and its people are fabricated. It is an

invented narrative mixed with historical anecdotes. In fact, Walter Davis points out that

while More’s first published work was the co-translation (with Erasmus) of Lucian’s prose

fiction, Utopia is in fact More’s “only fully developed work of fiction”.181 It is important,

however, to understand the fiction in Utopia not just as a literary genre but also as a

philosophical concept. Some critics, like Alan Nagel, confuse fiction with falsehood;182

however, lying should not equate to fiction or fictionality. This should be how we approach

the concept of “lying” in reading Utopia. As Nagel notes: “The author, again like Raphael,

just might be an inveterate liar; after all, he chose to translate Lucian’s Philopseudes, or ‘lie-

lover’”.183 There is always an element of reality or truth in fiction. Truth is not to be sifted

out from fiction. The American philosopher Nelson Goodman puts it well when he says

that “fiction cannot be about anything nonactual, since there is nothing nonactual, no

merely-possible or impossible worlds; […] Fiction, then, no matter how false or how far-

out, is about what is actual when about anything at all.”184 Goodman’s definition brings

180 Nettleship 13. 181 Davis 249. 182 Alan F. Nagel, “Lies and the Limitable Inane: Contradiction in More’s Utopia”, Renaissance Quarterly 26.2 (1973): 173-80. 183 Nagel 179. 184 Wolfgang Iser, The Fictive and the Imaginary: Charting Literary Anthropology (Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993) 158. Iser quotes from Nelson Goodman’s definition of fiction; see Of Mind and Other Matters (Cambridge, MA and London: Harvard University Press, 1984) 125.

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home what Darko Suvin calls the utopian genre as the “possible impossible”.185 In a similar

vein, Hayden White argues that this is “what Aristotle had in mind when, instead of

opposing history to poetry, he suggested their complementarity, joining both of them to

philosophy in the human effort to represent, imagine and think the world in its totality,

both actual and possible, both real and imagined, both known and only experienced”.186

This is where the compelling intersection between fiction and fact emerges. Harry Berger

indicates that fiction is “etymologically and semantically related to terms meaning invention,

creation, construction, and to terms meaning illusion; it suggests both something made and

something made up”. 187 However, in explaining the Latin roots of fiction and fact, Martin

Procházka suggests that these two terms are in fact not so remote, and that fiction should

not be confused with illusion or fallacy. 188 Borrowing Leibniz’s term “compossible”,

Procházka points out that whereas Renaissance artists are often considered “the creator[s]

of the ‘second nature’”, in the eighteenth century, along with the advent of modern science,

“fiction is […] connected with a notion of the ‘second world’ or ‘heterocosm’ which is

‘compossible’ […] with the world created by God, yet by no means imitating or even

resembling it”.189 Harry Berger reminds readers that by the time of Leibniz and Newton,

the second world appears to be considered to be superseding the first world.190 “Like God,

the poet chooses from the infinite number of possibilities, materialising some of them in

the ‘heterocosm’ of his artwork”, writes Procházka.191 This “heterocosm”, literally another

universe, finds resonance in fiction as a means of creating an alternative world. We should

understand Utopia as a heterocosm presenting possibilities. This is where I distinguish the

viewing of fiction in Utopia on two fronts: pragmatically to use it as a narrative device, and

philosophically to understand it with the concept of heterocosm, a medium of

encompassing, experimenting, and exploring alternatives in the hands of the writer.

185 Darko Suvin, Metamorphoses of Science Fiction: On the Poetics and History of a Literary Genre (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1979) 43. 186 Hayden White, “Introduction: Historical Fiction, Fictional History and Historical Reality”, Rethinking History 9.2/3 (2005): 147. 187 Berger 41. 188 Martin Procházka, “Fiction in Science and Literature: Language Structures as Interfaces”, Pierres Gravées: Mélanges in Memoriam Michel Viel, ed. Yann Migoubert (Paris: Sorbonne-É ditions du relief, 2011) 237. 189 Procházka 238. 190 Berger 45-46. 191 Procházka 238-39.

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Already in early modern times, George Puttenham had adopted the term

“heterocosm” to describe the poet as the creator of another world.192 The construct of

seeing the artist as the creator of a second nature was developed by Sir Philip Sidney, who

argued:

Onely the Poet disdeining to be tied to any such subjectiõ, lifted up with the vigor of his own invention, doth grow in effect into an other nature: in making things either better then nature bringeth foorth, or quite a new, formes such as never were in nature: […] her [nature’s] world is brazen, the Poets only deliver a golden.193

Devoting a subchapter to discussing the poem as heterocosm, M. H. Abrams specifies the

changing metaphor of the poem, from “imitation, a ‘mirror of nature’ [to] ‘that of the

poem as heterocosm, ‘a second nature’, created by the poet in an act analogous to God’s

creation of the world”.194 And poets, who display in poems their vision of the world, are

creators no less crucial than God. I am referring to poetry within the framework of this

thesis because poetry and fiction were interchangeable concepts in the Renaissance. Joseph

Levine suggests that there is a new sense of historical consciousness in the Renaissance in

terms of fiction, as opposed to how fiction was treated in the Middle Ages, where it was

“passed off as histories, or written histories into which they intruded fiction, almost

without criticism”.195 Likewise, what Abrams explains of the essence of poetry, I believe,

effectively captures Utopia’s nature as a heterocosm: it is “an object-in-itself, a self-

contained universe of discourse”.196 Indeed, More creates a different world in and with

Utopia, a fabricated realm embodying his aspirations as presented in a textual narrative.

Details of this ideal land are illustrated with a strong element of ekphrasis,197 the objective

of which is to “set it before our eyes”, as the Greek rhetorical tradition goes, especially

with the paratextual apparatus reinforcing this sense of vividness, making Utopia truly “a

self-contained universe of discourse”.

192 Quoted in Meyer Abrams, The Mirror and the Lamp: Romantic Theory and the Critical Tradition (New York: Norton, 1958) 273. 193 Sir Philip Sidney, The Complete Works of Sir Philip Sidney, Volume III. Defence of Poesie; Political Discourses; Correspondence; Translations, ed. Albert Feuillerat (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1923) 8. 194 Abrams 272. 195 Joseph Levine, “Thomas More and the English Renaissance: History and Fiction in Utopia”, The Historical Imagination in Early Modern Britain: History, Rhetoric, and Fiction, 1500-1800, eds Donald R. Kelley and David Harris Sacks (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997) 83. 196 Abrams 272. 197 For a discussion of ekphrasis, see Carlo Ginzburg, No Island Is an Island: Four Glances at English Literature in a World Perspective (New York: Columbia University Press, 2000) 5.

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Fiction as a textual cradle nurturing potentialities is reflected in Dominic Baker-

Smith’s observation of the general pattern in reading Utopia: an emphasis on the Utopian

institutions over the mediating dialogues, the blueprint over the fiction,198 and that fiction

“is seen as more of a narrative device than an exploratory medium, and this seems to be

true of most readings of Utopia down to relatively modern times”.199 Seeing fiction as an

exploratory medium echoes my proposed second dimension of fiction in Utopia: that of a

heterocosm encompassing and exploring possibilities, a textual space for poet or fiction

writer to create, to enquire, and to trial. The fiction in Utopia provides the testing ground –

or the heterocosm – in which potentialities find materialisation. Stephen Greenblatt also

suggests that More’s predilection to “frame his fancy” evinces his “constant recourse in his

writing to the hypothetical situation”.200 Walter Davis, similarly, uses Cardinal Morton’s

commentary in Book One of Utopia to testify to his own argument that “[fiction] was

hypothesis or exploration, an image in words of what might be true or should be true”.201 To

Hythloday’s proposal of punishing criminals not by hanging but by making them slaves,

Cardinal Morton has, in fact, a welcoming attitude: “It is not easy to guess whether it would

turn out well or ill inasmuch as absolutely no experiment has been made” (81). Cardinal

Morton is portrayed here as a man receptive to hypotheses; More’s putting his vision down

on paper reflects his own proclivity for experimenting and exploring. Returning to my

distinction of fiction as a narrative device and a philosophical concept: fiction is the literary

medium that carries More’s heterocosm, the second world that has one foot in reality while

simultaneously presenting and testing an alternative betterness. Walter Davis’s concluding

remark finely sums up how to approach fiction in Utopia:

Surely the novelty of Utopia in Thomas More’s time lay not only in the communism of Utopia […] but also in his mode of presentation, in his fiction. Utopia is not an argument for communism. It is not an argument at all (Book I told us that). It is a fiction. The invitation Thomas More held out to his contemporaries was to enter into a whole new way, a hypothetical way, of thinking about life.202

198 Baker-Smith (2014) 493. 199 Baker-Smith (2014) 494. 200 Greenblatt 32. 201 Walter Davis 253. Davis argues that Morton is portrayed as a man who “tries to weld together ideals and facts by means of testing, by hypothesis—his is a provisional mind that plays with ideas, he is the hero of hypothesis”. See Davis 255. 202 Davis 268.

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3.2 DIALOGUE IN UTOPIA

The literary device that More adopted for Book One is what Edward Surtz calls “dramatic

dialogue”.203 I identify with A. E. Malloch’s definition of a dramatic speech:

a natural condition of dramatic speech is that, though it proceeds from an author, it achieves a status independent of the author. The dramatic author can manipulate speech without associating himself ‘personally’ with it. He can exploit falsehood without becoming a liar. He can make untruth serve the cause of knowledge.204

Unlike the Platonic dialogue which “simulates the give-and-take of actual conversation”,205

the dialogic form that More adopts is closer to the Ciceronian dialogue, composed of

lengthy speeches with occasional interruptions, presenting alternatives without offering a

definite conclusion.206 This, according to Baker-Smith, “had traditionally been the preserve

of philosophical authors”. 207 Without referring directly to the function of Ciceronian

dialogue, Quentin Skinner suggests that with all the ironies and unresolved obscurities in

Utopia, More’s intention was to challenge readers to “consider seriously whether Utopia may

not represent the best state of a commonwealth”.208 What is implied here is that a book

delivered in a fusion of serio-jocularity, ending with an inconclusive peroration, points to

the function of Ciceronian dialogue of persuading and dissuading without favouring either

side. It leaves readers to contemplate the potentialities and practicalities of establishing an

ideal commonwealth if modelled on the particularities in Utopia.

Richard Schoeck advises readers not to think of dialogues in too literary a way, as

the conversation between interlocutors at a given scene. Rather, attention must be paid to

the different levels of dialogue occurring in Book One. Schoeck specifies three levels of

dialogue at work: firstly, the conversation between More, Giles, and Hythloday as well as

the imaginary dialogues that took place at Cardinal Morton’s table some twenty odd years

previously. The second level of dialogue involves the epistles among More’s humanist

coterie that were published alongside Utopia. Those epistles were aimed at “continuing the

203 Edward S. J. Surtz, “Aspects of More’s Latin Style in Utopia”, Studies in the Renaissance 14 (1967): 93. 204 A. E. Mollach, “The Techniques and Function of the Renaissance Paradox”, Studies in Philology 53.2 (1956): 195-96. 205 George M. Logan, “Utopia and Deliberative Rhetoric”, Moreana 31.118-19 (1994): 105. 206 Cambridge Utopia (1995) xxii-xxiii. 207 Baker-Smith (1991) 118. 208 Quentin Skinner, “Sir Thomas More’s Utopia and the Language of Renaissance Humanism”, The Languages of Political Theory in Early-Modern Europe, ed. Anthony Pagden (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987) 124. Emphasis mine.

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dialogue”.209 This metaphorical dimension of dialogue links to my analysis of the Utopian

paratexts, in particular those with authorial sanction (1516-1518). More’s humanist friends

that contributed to the prefatory apparatus were an “outer audience [functioning] as an

extension of the fictive humanist audience More creates within Utopia itself ”. 210 Seen from

this view, those paratexts inherently extend the Utopian fiction into a larger spectrum that

crosses the persona More’s reportage and authorial More’s real-life occurrences211, making

paratexts an essential element in accessing More’s Utopia. This level is reflected in how

Harry Berger distinguishes Utopia as “three moments”.212 In a similar vein, Dominic Baker-

Smith reads it as “three concentric circles”, composed of Hythloday’s portrayal of Utopia,

the scene-setting conversation in the opening of Book One with the discussions of the

social maladies of England and Europe, rounded up by the paratextual material.213 The

dialogue in Book One and Hythloday’s monologic account of Utopia are mentioned in

both Berger’s and Baker-Smith’s threefold categorisation. The difference between them lies

in the weight given to the paratextual apparatus: whereas Berger highlights a specific epistle

from More to Giles, the Prefatio,214 Baker-Smith understands all of the ancillary material as

equally crucial in constituting this layer of the concentric circles. Berger’s emphasis on the

Prefatio is reflected in the frequency of its inclusion in the Mandarin editions. As readers

move on to the epistles and commendatory epigrams from Utopia proper, they are

immersed in a lengthened narrative, wondering whether it is a fiction, a real account, or an

amalgamation of “sham historicity”. 215

The third level of dialogue is that Utopia provided an external model that had never

been seen before in Europe. Schoeck contends that before the sixteenth century Europe

was a remarkably closed society that had no other political or cultural models, except “the

209 Schoeck (1969) 25. 210 Astell 304-05. Schoeck notes that all these humanists wrote “from their own national and cultural communities”, thus providing alternatives to contemplate and expand. See Schoeck (1969) 25. 211 For the historical figure Thomas More as opposed to the character he penned in Utopia, I use authorial More and reportorial More (or persona More) to distinguish between the two. 212 The three moments include More’s first epistle to Giles, the First Book of Utopia, and Hythloday’s monologue which takes up the bulk of Book Two. See Berger 61, 71. Berger’s article is the abridged version of his book Second World and Green World: Studies in Renaissance Fiction-Making (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988). In my thesis, I use Berger’s article version as reference. 213 McCutcheon, “Review Essay” 280. 214 Berger underlines the use of present tense in this letter being characteristic of the epistolary form. See Berger 61. 215 Baker-Smith, More’s Utopia 76.

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Platonic communities of the past and their like”.216 Unlike Aristotle’s and Plato’s models

that are “purely argumentative”, Utopia establishes a speculative model that sets the author’s

vision in a fictive setting. As Schoeck remarks, “[o]nce published, the Utopia offered such

an external model, for like any Renaissance poem it imitates, represents, and figures

forth”. 217 Of the three levels of dialogue, it is the second dimension, paratexts as an

extension of the Utopian dialogue – hence fiction – that I highlight in my dissertation.

4 MORE’S SELF-FASHIONING IN UTOPIA

Utopia as a whole has inspired a wide range of sometimes vacillating commentaries. More

had given those ideas – those opposing voices in the dialogue – much consideration, and

elaborated on them both in content and in form. These conflicting viewpoints lead readers

to another crucial point of interrogation: self-fashioning, and Stephen Greenblatt’s

theorisation is of enduring relevance in envisaging More’s dividedness of mind, manifest

primarily in the dialogue. Greenblatt explains that the starting point for his seminal book

Renaissance Self-Fashioning is that in sixteenth-century England there was a strong sense that

selves could be fashioned.218 Greenblatt observes that, at that time, “there appears to be an

increased self-consciousness about the fashioning of human identity as a manipulable,

artful process”.219 Fashion was a strong currency “as a way of designating the forming of a

self ”,220 and self-fashioning had also acquired different meanings. Above all, its sense as

representation is pertinent to understanding the individual roles of More: “it suggests

representation of one’s nature or intention in speech or actions.” 221 Here we have the

persona More engaging in a fictional dialogue with yet another made-up figure, Hythloday,

and the account is documented by the authorial More, whose viewpoints represented by

his persona are undetermined in a real-life context, open to interpretation. Greenblatt

postulates that such a way of viewing self-fashioning brings us back to literature, because

self-fashioning “functions without regard for a sharp distinction between literature and

social life”. Social life, in More’s case, will be his public self and private self fighting against

216 Schoeck (1969) 25. 217 Schoeck (1969) 25. 218 Greenblatt 1. 219 Greenblatt 2. 220 Greenblatt 2. 221 Greenblatt 3.

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each other over whether to enter the King’s service, as demonstrated in Book One of

Utopia, among his other concerns.

Joseph Levine argues that More’s self-consciousness of his own conflicting

viewpoints and his willingness to display them in a written dialogue to be published was

pioneering in English literature, 222 substantiating “an increased self-consciousness [in

sixteenth-century England] about the fashioning of human identify as a manipulatable,

artful process”.223 If self-fashioning was about identity formation, then self-reference ought

to play a major role in this “artful process”. McCutcheon suggests that there is

an oblique self-referentiality about the discourse, made wholly visible when Hythloday explains how Utopians treat fools, that allows the authorial More to signal his consciousness of the text and reinforces the joco-serious perspective that grounds it and invites a multifaceted response from the reader.224

Such self-referentiality can be located at different points in Utopia. To begin with, More

himself was educated in Latin from an early age, and his Latin style was highly admired by

his fellow humanists. Despite the fact that he learned Greek only later in life, his mastery in

Greek was no less appreciated than his Latin.225 The self-referentiality in the storyline, then,

is exhibited in the experienced sailor Hythloday, whose mastery in Greek was better than

his Latin. In addition, Levine applies the concept of self-fashioning to More in regards to

the two orders of friars in Utopia. One order of friars is the ascetics, refraining from eating

meat; they are celibate and considered holier. The second order of friars participates in the

Utopian life and is considered the wiser. Levine makes the analogy that these two orders of

friars are like monastic life as opposed to public employment, as well as medieval

Christianity, which valued contemplative allegiance, as opposed to Renaissance humanism,

which highlighted active allegiance.226 These two polar opposite variations, however, were

embodied in the authorial More himself, not only in different periods but at times also in

the same phases of his life. It was about this time that More was considering whether to

enter King Henry’s service. The fact that More was aware of this unresolved dividedness

222 Levine 91. 223 Levine 71; Greenblatt 2. 224 McCutcheon (2015) 93. Similarly, Kinney contends that by beginning Utopia with historical events and by employing the author himself as an interlocutor, Utopia has been credited with being “extraordinary in [its] degree of self-reference”. See Kinney 440. 225 Kristeller indicates that the two lengthy epistles that More wrote to Martin Dorp and to Oxford University had addressed this subject. See Kristeller (1980) 6. 226 Levine 76.

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of his inner self and that he was not reluctant to convey it in Utopia renders it not just a

narrative satirising the social woes and portraying an ideal country, but more significantly, it

means that it represents a dialogue with and within More himself. 227 Or in David

Bevington’s words, it is “a dialogue of More’s mind with itself ”. 228 Such a dialogue

exemplifies Greenblatt’s conceptualisation of self-fashioning, which “occurs at the point of

encounter between authority and an alien.”229 The authority would be the Court and the

Church in which More took on a featuring public role; the alien, or the “threatening Other”

as Greenblatt calls it, would be More’s humanistic, heterocosmic vision against the

Institutions, manifested in the representation of the Utopian society. More importantly,

Greenblatt argues that self-fashioning “involves submission to an absolute power or

authority situatied at least partially outside the self ” and that when these two opposing

forces are located outside the self, they are simultaneously “experienced as inward

necessities”.230 Indeed, we find the most complex voices emerging at the intersection of

More’s public self and his private self: the persona More seems to have taken with most of

Hythloday’s propositions, except entering the Court and abolishing private property. This

ambivalence is not conclusive either in Book One or Book Two of Utopia, further

intensifying More’s self-fashioning and self-cancellation, the convoluted interplay of the

authority and the alien.

While the persona More is “a fictional caricature of author More’s uncertainty”,231

the mariner-narrator Raphael Hythloday in the dialogue, according to Greenblatt,

“represents all that More deliberately excluded from the personality he created and played;

he is the sign of More’s awareness of his own self-creation, hence his own

incompleteness”. 232 Attempting to negotiate his incompleteness via the creation of a

distinctive character, More “allows his public self and his excluded self to fight it out”.233

More’s public self is the one that entered the court, whereas the excluded self was the one

on the verge of entering a monastery for good. In Utopia, the persona More represents the

public self, whereas Hythloday is the “carefully crafted identity” that was excluded from the

227 For similar observations, see Levine 76-77. 228 Bevington 497; cf. Robert C. Elliott, “The Shape of Utopia”, English Literary History 30 (1963): 317-34. Bevington also calls this conflict “the two polarities of More’s own mind”. See Bevington 498. 229 Greenblatt 9. 230 Greenblatt 9. 231 Gerard Wegemer, “The Rhetoric of Opposition in Thomas More’s Utopia: Giving Form to Competing Philosophies”, Philosophy and Rhetoric 23.4 (1990): 288. 232 Greenblatt 33. 233 Fox 23.

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public self.234 Greenblatt’s chapter primarily discusses “the complex interplay in More’s life

and writings of self-fashioning and self-cancellation, the crafting of a public role and the

profound desire to escape from the identity so crafted”.235 Which was the self-fashioning

and which was the self-cancellation? Was the public self to be fashioned or cancelled? The

question was to be debated in Book One of Utopia; what is to be fought out, therefore, was

the inconclusiveness of More’s ambivalent vision. If this line of distinction is not made

accessible as the background knowledge to reading Utopia, the debate about whether to

enter the King’s service as well as the dispute between the friar and the fool in Book One

may appear to be unrelated anecdotes, taken merely as part of the storyline. This

ambivalence is not only strengthened in the peroration, where readers are to find out

whether Hythloday’s viewpoints are accepted by Giles and the persona More, but also in

the Utopian paratexts that function as an extension of the dialogue, which substantiates yet

again the importance of a paratextual and paratranslational approach to reading Utopia.

5 CONCLUDING REMARKS

The first phase of our Utopian sojourn set out with the publication history of the early

modern Latin editions published during More’s lifetime (1516-1519) as well as Ralph

Robinson’s two English translations of 1551 and 1556. The shifting of paratexts included

in these editions offers a clue as to how the changing milieux influenced what was to be

selected in a printed volume, further evincing the need to approach Utopia paratextually.

With this basic layout in mind, readers were then brought into the rhetorical context in

which Utopia was born. A critical reading of Utopia demands an engagement with its

rhetoric, especially so because it was conceived in an era in the curricula of which rhetoric

played a pivotal role. Renaissance rhetoric was different from that of the medieval trivium

primarily because the former was used as a vehicle for affairs of “this-worldliness”; it was a

product born out of the marriage between wisdom and style, in pursuit of urging people to

act virtuously. More’s moral and political wisdom was well merged with his eloquence

written in the libellus, in the form of deliberative and demonstrative oratory, a grand vision

disguised in dialogue and fiction. I then discussed the modes of narrative, specifically

234 Greenblatt 36. 235 Greenblatt 13. Fox, however, also points out how some critics find fault with Greenblatt’s self-fashioning for being too clumsy as theory of identity formation. See Fox 23.

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dialogue and fiction in the light of both narrative devices and philosophical concepts, the

latter of which was intended as a means to divulge More’s self-fashioning and to present

his hypothetical heterocosm. More’s Utopia, then, is his vision of what an ideal

commonwealth might be like if certain rules were followed; it is More’s heterocosm in

which he experimented with possibilities that found no materialisation in real life. All this

contributed to the reading experience for More’s intended early modern readership. That is

to say, fiction, dialogue, and paratext are tightly interlaced. While all Mandarin Utopias retain

the modes of narrative, the original paratexutal apparatus has chiefly been overlooked,

rendering a less holistic grasp of Utopia during the process of this cultural transferral. My

dissertation argues that it is through an awareness of these three that an informed reading

of Utopia is feasible, and that Mandarin Utopias, despite the degree to which they have been

refracted through translation, ought to approximate this level of representation if they are

to be faithful to More’s intention.

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CHAPTER TWO.

ARTICULATING UTOPIA IN CHINESE: INTRODUCTION AND ARCHETYPES

The second phase of the Utopian journey takes readers to Chinese soil, to see the before

and the during of this transplantation of text and concept. The first half of Chapter Two

discusses the initial introduction of the concept “utopia”, before the work itself was

officially translated into Mandarin in 1935. The latter half of the chapter takes readers a

step further back into two Chinese traditional concepts, Peach Blossom Spring and Da Tong,

also called the Great Unity or the Great Harmony. Moving from the Renaissance context

into the Chinese one, this phase investigates utopia’s first introduction and two archetypes

of ideal realms, aiming to uncover the initial refraction through which Utopia was exposed

to Mandarin-speaking readership.

1 THE FIRST INTRODUCTION OF THE CONCEPT “UTOPIA”

While Utopia as a book was not translated into Mandarin until 1935, the term “utopia” had

been introduced a few decades before any translation was attempted. This uniquely crafted

translation of the sixteenth-century neologism “utopia” is a beautiful conflation, with its

proximity to both sound and meaning. The first character, 烏 [wu], means dark; and most

importantly, it underlines the quality of being unreal or non-existent. When combined with

有 – “to have” – it highlights the sense of make-believe. A common idiom 子虛烏有 [zi

xu wu you], a conflation of an ancient person 子虛 with the term 烏有, literally means –

often pejoratively – pure imagination or an unreal thing. 烏 replaces the first two characters

of 無何有之鄉 [wu he you zhi xiang], sometimes written as 烏有之鄉 [wu you zhi xiang]

– both of which refer to Zhuangzi’s vision of the ideal world of nothingness, an illusory

realm. 236 The second character, 托 [tuo], means to entrust something, materialistic or

236 The last character of these two phrases 鄉 [xiang] signifies a region or a place in this context,

whereas 之 [zhi] is a possessive pronoun. 無何有 [wu he you] and 烏有 [wu you] fundamentally

refer to the same: while the former means having nothing, the latter indicates illusion or non-existence. When conflated together, both phrases denote a place of nothingness, which can be read as closer to the ou- feature of utopia.

64

otherwise, to another. In the case of Utopia, More entrusts his aspiration to a fictional

island manifested in an imaginary travelogue, in the hope of it being circulated to a wider

readership, awakening their awareness, and possibly improving the socio-political landscape

of contemporaneous England. The third character, 邦 [bang], designates a country or place,

the Mandarin equivalent of topos. With the three characters conflated, 烏托邦 becomes a

place, or a no-place, into which an idealistic vision is projected, even though it has often

been used pejoratively, like its English source. This translation of the neologism “utopia” is

so exquisitely designed and has been so prevalent that even native Mandarin speakers like

myself refer to ideal or idealistic desires or plans as utopian – “wu tuo bang” – rather than

using the common Chinese archetype of an ideal world, Peach Blossom Spring, which

comes from a classical text that is part of the required reading in high school textbooks in

Taiwan.

It has been assumed that the term appeared with the first translation published in

1935, and another even less informed argument has attributed it to Dai Liuling (1913-1998),

the noted translator and scholar of British literature who published his first translation of

Utopia in 1956. In an essay collection that discusses the aptitude and demeanour of five

professoriate-intellectuals during the Second Sino-Japanese War, one chapter is dedicated to

Dai Liuling, titled, “Dai Liuling: The Man Who Brings Utopia into Mandarin”.237 This book

was published relatively recently, in 2013, which reveals a possible literary loophole: firstly,

the research of this work was manifestly not conducted to a high standard of quality,

having overlooked such a pronounced mistake. The fact that Dai was not the first to have

translated “Utopia” – either the term or the book – could easily be discovered had the

author engaged in a very simple and straightforward library catalogue search.

Countering the said mistakes, Gao Fang argues that the sinologist and

enlightenment thinker Yan Fu (1854-1921) was in fact the first who coined the term “wu

tuo bang” in his translation of Thomas Henry Huxley’s Evolution and Ethics: And Other

Essays. 238 Yan’s translation of Huxley’s work was first published in segments in the

periodical 國聞彙編 [Guo Wen Hui Bian], founded by Yan and several other activists, and

237 Zhang Zaijun 張在軍, “Caiqing yu fengfan: kangzhan shiqi de wuda jiaoshou xubian” 才情與

風範: 抗戰時期的武大教授續編 [Aptitude and Demeanour: The Sequel to the Professoriate at

Wuda during the Second Sino-Japanese War] (Taipei: Xiuwei zixun, 2013) 41. 238 For more information, see Gao Fang 高放, “‘Wu tuo bang’ yi ci shou yi zhe shi shui?” “乌托邦”

一词首译者是谁? [Who Is the First Translator of the Term “Utopia”?], Xinxiang pinglun新湘评论

(9) 2013 <http://www.xxplzx.com/xxplml/awt2007/btwl/t20130514_420794.htm> 07 Nov 2013.

http://www.xxplzx.com/xxplml/awt2007/btwl/t20130514_420794.htm

65

later the complete translation of Evolution and Ethics was published in Hubei in 1898, which

was then widely circulated. Guo Wen Hui Bian was founded in 1897 by Yan Fu, and was the

first periodical published by the revolutionaries of the late Qing Dynasty. It advocated,

among other things, constitutional monarchy, which inevitably meant it was subjected to

persecution by Empress Cixi (1835-1908). Its office was burnt down during the Boxer

Rebellion; and with the breakdown of its printing machines, Guo Wen Hui Bian was

unavoidably terminated in 1900. Even though it survived a mere three years, the serial

publication of Guo Wen Hui Bian served as a pivotal space in which the revolutionaries

voiced their concerns and introduced what they considered advanced ideas, in the hope of

bringing change. This may be taken as, in Genette’s conceptualisation, the factual paratext,

that is, how a certain work finds its niche and how it is presented given a specific context.

The fact that Yan’s translation of Evolution and Ethics was published in this highly politically-

oriented periodical indicates that its target readers were possibly like-minded people who

were looking for enlightenment ideas, and the reader response may be influenced by the

larger context in which it was wrapped. It may be difficult to relate Utopia, or at least the

pre-figurations of utopias, to a book that advocates “Natural Selection, or Survival of the

Fittest”. In this seminal work, Huxley envisages an earthly paradise where conflict is non-

existent and human beings do not have to fight for survival. In his translation, Yan Fu

called the paradise that Huxley portrayed “烏托邦 [Wu Tuo Bang]”, and entitled the eighth

introductory sub-chapter “Wu Tuo Bang”.239 To avoid any confusion, Yan Fu supplied an

additional elucidation inside the main text that Utopia, or Wu Tuo Bang, is an ideal nation

that bears no real existence.240 It does not exist in space or in time, but only in people’s

imaginations. If this Wu Tuo Bang were ever to be attained, it could only be made possible

by human governance rather than natural law or divine order. Pu Guoliang points out that

in Yan’s earlier translation of the Shannxi edition the target text “hence to call it Utopia”

was initially rendered as “hence it is referred to as Huaxu in China, and the Westerners call

it Utopia”.241 華胥 [Huaxu] originates from a Taoist classic 列子 [Leizi], in which the

Yellow Emperor sleepwalks into a country where there is no hierarchy nor desire. People

239 Gao (2017) 182. The introductory chapter is called “Prolegomena” and is divided into fourteen sections. 240 Gao, “Also on Utopia” (2013) n.p. See also Pu, “Problems of the Study of Utopia” (2016) 8. The

original goes: “夫如是之群，古今之世所未有也，故稱之曰烏托邦。烏托邦者，猶言無是

之國也，僅為設想所存而已。”. Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations, trans. Yan Fu (Beijing:

Commercial Press, 1981) 22. Quoted in Pu (2016) 8. 241 Pu (2016) 8.

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are free of fear, pain, sorrow, and worry. The Emperor returns to reality and reigns his

country accordingly, bringing China to another heyday. Understanding what Huaxu means

and that Yan replaced it with Wu Tuo Bang offers a telling sign of how Yanfu’s

understanding of Huxley’s paradise has shifted from a Taoist take to an inherently

politically one: Utopia.

Intriguingly enough, the term “utopia” is not used anywhere in the main text of

Evolution and Ethics; instead, in illustrating this ideal realm, Thomas Huxley wrote: “Thus

the administrator might look to the establishment of an earthly paradise, a true garden of

Eden, in which all things should work together towards the well-being of the gardeners.”242

Rather than translating this original passage by Huxley, Yan Fu replaced it with an

annotation of his own about More’s Utopia, noting that this Wu Tuo Bang is the ideal

nation that More envisaged in the early sixteenth century, and that there is nothing to it but

fictiveness. Yan Fu himself never explained why he crafted 烏托邦 to title the introductory

chapter. Yet it is worth mentioning that Yan is renowned for inserting his own

interpretation and comments into his translations – not in the endnotes or footnotes but in

the core text – in which case, the translation is not so much a translation per se, but editing

and rewriting; or in Lefevere’s theorisation, refraction. The aforementioned would be a

fitting example – a chapter title added in the translation where the original text lacks one.

This also testifies to how translation should be read paratextually, or rather,

paratranslationally, as it produces additional meaning and may effectively affect the reception

of a narrative.

Yan Fu’s profound translation of the term “utopia”, that has proximity to both the

sound and meaning of the original, has been so influential that subsequent renditions,

dictionaries, and social criticisms all adopted this version, with the nuance in the second

character. For instance, examining his own personal collections, Gao comments that as

early as 1930, “Wu Tuo Bang” was mentioned on the seventh page of Zhao Lanping’s

History of Socialism;243 in the same year, the Commercial Press published a thick volume

carrying the same title, The History of Socialism, composed by Wu Liping. In this volume,

“Wu Tuo Bang” appeared in the first section of Chapter Two, a twenty-page discussion

242 Thomas Henry Huxley, The Major Prose of Thomas Henry Huxley, ed. Alan P. Barr (Athens, GA and London: University of Georgian Press, 1997) 294. Quoted in Gao (2013) n.p. 243 See “Also on Utopia” n.p. Later to be mentioned in Gao (2017).

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devoted specifically to Thomas More and his Utopia. This, according to Gao Fang, is the

earliest documented record of the Chinese Marxists scrutinising More’s Utopia.244

A more recent study by Yan Jianfu likewise challenges the year of the first

introduction of the concept of utopia by including reference books in his target of

investigation. In a comprehensive study that examines the late Qing novels, Yan Jianfu

devotes a chapter to discussing the construct of utopia, including the first introduction of

the term “Utopia” and how the utopian vision travels and manifests itself in late Qing

fictional works. Instead of analysing Utopia itself, that is, the fictional narrative that lends its

name to the eponymous genre, Yan Jianfu focuses on how Utopia was explicated in a new

cultural time frame, the re-contextualisation of which he defines as “conceptual travel”,

serving as the subtitle of his chapter.

In Yan Jianfu’s study, the translation of the book Utopia is only mentioned in

passing, when he states that the first one was published in 1935 by Shanghai Commercial

Press, referring to《民國時期總書目(1911-1949)》[The Compilations of Titles during

the Republic of China 1911-1949]. Yan Jianfu does not repudiate Gao Fang and several

other scholars who contend that Yan Fu gave Utopia its current Mandarin name, but his

research allows him to go a step further back, perusing when and how the term “Utopia”

was first introduced into Chinese. Yan Jianfu surveys several major reference books in the

late Qing dynasty, arriving at the conclusion that they can be divided into two groups, ones

by foreign missionaries in the late nineteenth century, and the others by the late Qing

intellectuals around the turn of the twentieth century.

The first group provides the earliest documented appearance of the term “Utopia”.

In the English and Chinese Dictionary compiled and edited by the German missionary

Wilhelm Lobscheid245 during the years 1866 to 1869, there is an entry for “Utopia” that

reads:

244 Quoted in Gao, “Also on Utopia” n.p. 245 A Chinese name was given to Wilhelm Lobscheid (1822-1893), 羅存德 [Luo Cun De]. This

sinophone name is coined in proximity to his surname, Lobscheid, although the degree of proximity is not high. It reflects the tendency of translating foreign names in accordance with their pronunciation. It does not happen often that the translation corresponds to both the sound and meaning, such how utopia is delicately rendered as “wu tuo bang”. Lobscheid, or “Luo Cun De”, serves as an example that only proximity to sound was met.

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Utopia, n. The land of illusory happiness, the land of luxuriance, the country of happiness, Peng Lai. Utopian, a. Of the blissful country, in accordance to the country of blissfulness.246

Two things need to be highlighted here: firstly, in this entry “Utopia” was given definitions,

but the term itself was left un-translated. Secondly, “Utopia” was explained as a fairly

general term, in closer connection to pre-figurations such as Arcadia,247 where people are

free of drudgery and happiness is granted. In fact, this dictionary definition was not

elaborate or descriptive. Instead, terms that are, in Lawrence Venuti’s words, of “domestic

intelligibility”248 were adopted, Peng Lai being a crucial example. Peng Lai is a toponym in

Chinese mythology where the Eight Immortals live and where the elixir of life is to be

sought. Yan Jianfu suggests that Lobscheid did so for ease of explanation, hence he

adopted concepts such as “illusory happiness” and Peng Lai, which would have been

abstract and yet familiar to Chinese readers. Translating foreign terms using Chinese

classical concepts was the translational practice commonly adopted in the late Qing

dynasty.249 This is the very first time that “Utopia” as a term was introduced into the

Mandarin context. By identifying with terms like “Peng Lai”, Yan Jianfu observes that

Lobscheid effectively withdrew the critical spirit as well as the solicitous concern250 that was

essential in understanding Utopia and further transformed it into a static interpretation. The

outcome, I argue, was similar to Chinese literary counterparts like Peach Blossom Spring

that underline a peaceful, drudgery-free life, and the pure happiness of an illusory land. In

246 The original reads: Utopia, n.幻樂之地，豐樂之地，安樂國，蓬萊。Utopian，a. 安樂國的，

照安樂之國。 247 Virgil’s version of Arcadia, illustrated in the Fourth Eclogue, also known as the Messianic Eclogue, is crucial in understanding the development of utopian thinking because, according to Sargent, Virgil “moved the past golden age to the future [and] the better world became based on human activity rather than simply being a gift from the gods”. See Sargent (2010) 16. This is the concept of human endeavour making all the difference. These two features have made significant adaptation to the myth as we would now commonly perceive it. Virgil’s version is no longer set from a nostalgic standpoint, and human efficacy, the one major factor that makes literary utopias as they are today, is brought into light. It could serve as a turning point from the mythical types to the early modern and modern utopias, where human beings are in control of their own destiny. In fact, in commenting on this transition, Sargent suggests that “Virgil’s images of the simple life in Arcadia are something of a transition between the fantasy of the first tradition and the human-created utopia of the second. And it is the human-created societies depicted by Greek and Roman writers that are most similar to More’s Utopia and the works that followed it.” 248 Venuti (2000) 484. 249 Yan Jianfu 顏健富, Cong ‘shenti’ dao ‘shijie’: wanqing xiaoshuo de xin gainian ditu 從「身體」到「世

界」: 晚清小說的新概念地圖 [From “Body” to “World”: The New Conceptual Map of the Late

Qing Novels] (Taipei: National Taiwan University Press, 2014) 141. 250 Yan 141.

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stories of Peng Lai, often called “Peng Lai Fairy Island” or “Mount Peng Lai”, an image of

material abundance, luxury, and indulgence is portrayed. Comparing it with Chinese or

Western pre-figurations of Utopia, however, it is less an Arcadian Peach Blossom Spring,

and more akin to the Land of Cockaygne, where excessive pleasure is unconditionally

granted and relished. If we take Arcadia and Peach Blossom Spring as the static

interpretation of blissfulness and enjoyment, Cockaygne and Peng Lai are an active version

of pleasurable bliss.

A few decades after the term “Utopia” first appeared as a dictionary entry in the

1860s, with the socio-political turbulence in late Qing China that encouraged a wave of

looking Westwards, this foreign concept was again brought into print, this time with a

different explication and outlook. In addition to the said introductory chapter titled “Wu

Tuo Bang” in his 1898 translation of Evolution and Ethics, Yan Fu adopted the term again,

this time in his translation of Adam Smith’s An Inquiry in to the Nature and Causes of the

Wealth of Nations, published in 1902.251 In the footnote to the translated text in which “Wu

Tuo Bang” appeared, Yan Fu offers a more specific account of the author and content of

the book Utopia. This footnote offers a brief summary and highlights the democratic

nature of Utopia, as well as that it represents high aspirations and is difficult to achieve.

Wu Tuo Bang, title of a novel. Written by English prime minister Thomas More in the tenth year of Zhengde in the Ming [Dynasty], to allegorise a well-governed democracy. Wu Tuo Bang, the name of an island, a non-existent country. Thereafter any discussion of a highly idealised, difficult-to-achieve society is named Wu Tuo Bang.252

In the same year that the translation of the British economist Adam Smith’s work was

published, Liang Qichao, a scholar and revolutionary who fled to Japan after the defeat of

the Hundred Days’ Reform,253 addressed a letter to his teacher and fellow leader of the

Reform, Kang Youwei. In this letter, Liang wrote: “Englishman Thomas More wrote a

251 For more information, see Yan 142. 252 Smith, Wealth of Nations 387n1. Quoted in Yan 142. Translation is mine. The original reads: 烏託

邦，說部名。明正德十年英相摩而妥瑪所著，以寓言民主之制，郅治之隆。烏託邦，島

國名，猶言無此國矣。故後人言有甚高之論，而不可施行，難以企及者，皆曰此烏託邦

制也。 253 Yan 143. As the name suggests, this was an unsuccessful and a rather short-lived reform (lasting only 103 days) initiated by the Emperor Kuangxu with the support of reformists like Kang Youwei and Liang Qichao. It aimed at regenerating the long corrupt Qing dynasty with the vain hope of implementing a constitutional monarchy. It was suppressed by the Empress Cixi, and the goal of constitutional monarchy was never to become a reality in the Qing dynasty.

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novel that was extremely magnificent. His pupils translated it as Avatamsaka World.” 254

Avatamsaka Sūtra is one of the most influential scriptures of Mahāyāna Buddhism. Rather

than paradise, the name Avatamsaka has been adopted to refer to Buddha’s version of an

ideal, harmonious universe. Yan Jianfu argues that using Avatamsaka to refer to Utopia

reflects how Buddhist concepts were heavily relied upon when explaining foreign concepts.

He further offers an insightful observation showing how the adoption of certain Buddhist

terms appropriates temporal perception in a literary tradition that lacks the concept of the

future. This literary tradition was influenced by how the ancient Chinese dynasties operated:

the fact that ancient China was ruled dynastically, and that calendars were also based on

dynasties, means that there was no linear concept of time. Each dynasty started with a new

calendar cycle, and time moved not towards a future but towards the end of a dynasty, or

era. Time was perceived and understood as a cyclical construct,255 thereby ruling out a

prospective outlook. Looking back toward the ancient sages and prime time of King Wen,

the retrospective outlook was rooted in traditional values; hence a foreign concept like

utopia that is itself progressive-spirited would inevitably expect to meet some confusion in

terms of reception.

In the following year, 1903, distinguished educator and scientist Ma Junwu (1881-

1940), who had also founded a translation society, published an article whose title may be

rendered as “The Pioneer of Socialism Thomas More and his view on Avatamsaka”.256 The

direct association with socialism is made here, which reveals a more political orientation of

the concept and the book. Even if the book title was rendered in – or substituted with – a

Buddhist concept, Ma demonstrated a higher level of conceptual understanding. In this

case, we may conclude that it was not Utopia that was appropriated but Avatamsaka. Again,

instead of adopting “Wu Tuo Bang” or coming up with his own rendition of the term, Ma

opted for avatamsaka as a synonym for utopia: “Avatamsaka world Utopia, a fictive realm

254 Translation is mine. Quoted in Yan Jianfu 143. The original reads: 英國德摩里著一小說，極

瑰瑋，弟子譯其名為曰《華嚴界》。

255 Yan Jianfu x. He used the term “輪迴”, which is itself a Buddhist concept meaning the

transmigration of souls as well as an eternal cycle of life and death, to illustrate his point. However, I would suggest that there is a conceptual discrepancy here because as far as my understanding goes, Jianfu was simply attempting to highlight the cyclical movement of the time perception, without the intention of bringing in any religious undertone. Yet by using a very specific Buddhist concept, his argument might have misguided readers to imbue a religious understanding into the whole context. 256 The original reads “社會主義之鼻祖德麻斯摩兒之華嚴界觀”.

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that resides in the thoughts of sages.”257 Like the anonymous translator-editor who had

referred to More’s Utopia as Avatamsaka in the New Novel, Ma Junwu considered this early

modern European narrative to be the representation of the Buddhist Nirvana. He argued,

in the same article, that the reason Yan Fu titled the eighth introductory chapter of

Evolution and Ethics “Wu Tuo Bang” was likely based on Huxley’s annotation of the earthly

paradise and true garden of Eden. Despite his inference, it is apparent that both Yan Fu

and Ma Junwu had generalised Utopia along with Paradise, Eden, and Avatamsaka, different

versions of the ideal realm.

2 CHINESE COUNTERPARTS: POLITICAL AND PASTORAL

2.1 DA TONG: A POLITICAL UTOPIA

The passage 大同 “Da Tong” [the Great Unity] from the Records of Rites has often been

considered Confucius’s outline of an ideal way of life, and is sometimes referred to as the

“Confucian utopia”; it deserves to be quoted in full:

When the great tao ran its course, all under heaven were for the public good; they elected those who were virtuous and competent for various offices, and people kept to their word and cultivated amicable relationships. As a result, people were kind not just to their kin, and they cared not just for their own children; so the elderly could enjoy old age, the mature ones made good use of their strength, and the young all grew up well and fine. Those who had lost their husbands or wives and had no one to support them were all taken good care of, and so were those who suffered from handicap or illness. Men all had suitable jobs, and women all found good families through marriage. They hated to see good discarded on the ground, but they kept those goods not for their own use; and they hated to see efforts made not by themselves, but they made efforts not in their own interests. Thus no plot or conspiracy would arise; no thieves, robbers, or troublemakers would emerge, so much so that the outer gates to houses were never closed, and that was indeed the condition of having achieved Great Unity.258

257 Quoted in Chun, n.p. The original reads: 華嚴界者 Utopia，哲人意想中之一虛境也。 258 禮記正義 Li ji zhengyi [The Correct Meaning of the Records of Rites], in Ruan Yuan, Shisan

jing zhushu, 2:1414. Quoted in Zhang Longxin (2005) 188. The original reads: 大道之行也，天下

為公。選賢與能，講信修睦。故人不獨親其親，不獨子其子；使老有所終，壯有所用，

幼有所長，矜、寡、孤、獨、廢疾者，皆有所養；男有分，女有歸。貨，惡其棄於地也，

不必藏於己；力，惡其不出於身也，不必為己。是故謀閉而不興，盜竊亂賊而不作，故

外戶而不閉，是謂「大同」。

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Despite its various similarities to More’s Utopia, Confucius’s “Da Tong” is not a literary

utopia per se. To begin with, this passage on the “Great Unity” is not a fictional narrative,

but rather belongs to the realm of speculative and political philosophy, and therefore it

cannot be understood as a literary utopia. It elucidates the socio-political structure of

Confucius’s ideal society without a fictive setting; yet it still needs to be brought into the

picture because, as Zhang Longxi postulates, “utopia in the Chinese tradition is not so

much a literary representation as a philosophical vision, and it is not only in literature but

also in moral and political philosophy that we may look for utopian constructions”.259 Since

this Confucian Utopia – to use the term loosely – has been so prevalent, it can serve as

groundwork for the further discussion of Chinese archetypes of utopias. In fact, it does

reflect a few features of Peach Blossom Spring that have often been overlooked: for

instance, the proper amount of work that, in addition to natural resources, forms the

backbone of this bucolic community.

Similar to how the Genesis story helped build the Christian frame of mind, the

Confucian classics also influenced how, before a serious reflection on the work, a Chinese

reader imagined the ideal society. The passage quoted above takes place in a conversation

between Confucius and his disciples, in which the Master discusses the ideal state of

humankind’s living conditions. The title “Great Unity” already speaks volumes about

Confucius’s ideal; what is intriguing is that the portrayal of the Great Unity is built upon

the heyday of King Wen of Zhou (1152-1056 BC), a period in which prosperity, harmony,

and peace reigned. The sense of “lost perfection”260 and looking back to the time of King

Wen indeed makes this Confucian Utopia a nostalgic one; yet, unlike the biblical paradise

that is forever lost due to man’s disobedience, the Great Unity presents a utopian vision

that is rooted in the past but workable in the present, and realisable in the future. It

provides the stimulus and space to refine and reform, without which humankind may end

up stagnated or regressed. It is in this sense of refining and reforming that finds resonance

in More’s Utopia, as well as the re- feature of contemporary utopian mentality that allows

for renegotiation and trial-and-error.

While various branches of Chinese philosophy have often given the impression of

a more inward-looking mentality, the distinguished Chinese thinker Feng Youlan suggests

otherwise. He argues that

259 Zhang Longxi (2005) 187-88. 260 Zhang Longxi (2005) 189.

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because it “roams within the bounds of society”, Confucianism appears more this-worldly than Taoism, and because it “roams beyond the bounds of society”, Taoism appears more other-worldly than Confucianism. These two trends of thought rivaled each other, but also complemented each other. They exercised a sort of balance of power. This gave the Chinese people a better sense of balance in regard to this-worldliness and other-worldliness.261

While “the Great Unity” is permeated with Confucian ideas, the mixture of Confucian and

Taoist influence is explicit in Tao Yuanming’s Peach Blossom Spring, despite the fact that its

pastoral setting has often misled readers into a more retrospective and inactive

interpretation.

Confucius’s vision is nostalgic, longing for a quintessential model of ancient times

that had truly existed. In fact, the accompanying rituals – some would have taken them to

be religious acts and hence mistaken the ancient society to be a religious one – were

intended “as auxiliaries to [Confucius’s] moral philosophy. The ancestor worship and ritual

offerings to heaven and earth performed by Confucius and the later Confucians were all

outer forms meant to induce inner respect for antiquity and former kings, and to bring

individual and social ethics to perfection.”262 This passage clears doubts about whether

Confucian thinking is indeed rationalistic, and further reaffirms the crucial role the past

golden age governed by sage-like kings occupies for Confucian thinking. Commenting on

this Confucian utopia, Zhang Longxi offers an interpretation that, I suggest, points to the

fundamental difference between classical Chinese cultures and the Christian West:

The way back to ancient perfection is not through faith or divine intervention, not by waiting for the apocalypse or the Second Coming. But by a rigorous human effort at the present, in this world, by the individual strife of each moral being to revive the culture of the last golden age.263

This quotation first makes a clear distinction from those retrospective utopian

prefigurations such as Arcadia and the Golden Age that are aided, or made feasible, by

either natural or divine forces. The emphasis is on the here-and-now as well as the human

261 See Fung Youlan, Zhongguo zhe xue jian shi 中国哲学简史 [A Short History of Chinese

Philosophy] trans, Zhao Fusan (Tianjin: Tianjin she hui ke xue yuan chubanshe, 2007) 36. Fung’s argument departs from Chuang-tzu’s, which that “Confucianists roam within the bounds of society, while the Taoist roams beyond it”. 262 See Zhou Yutong, “Confucius” in Zhou Yutong jingxue shi lunzhu xuanji [Selected Papers on the history of Classical Studies], 385. Quoted in Zhang Longxi (2005) 174. 263 Zhang Longxi (2005) 187.

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efficacy of Confucius’s ideal vision. Despite being nostalgic, this Great Unity resembles

More’s Utopia – or rather, the core utopian spirit following the Morean paradigm – in the

sense that the ideal is no longer just an idealistic vision but an idealisation that can be

approximated by human effort.264

The mention of “each moral being” offers yet another interesting interpretation,

which reflects, implicitly or not, the underlying difference of the view on the society and

the individual. To be a moral being (君子, jun zi) – to be benevolent – is the highest

standard that an individual can achieve, according to Confucian doctrines. Confucius’s ideal

vision thus has to be worked from within and then expanded, step by step, to the family,

society, and the whole human race. In fact, in 大學 Da Xue (the Great Learning) – one of

the Confucian canons – an excerpt goes as follows:

Their hearts being rectified, their persons were cultivated. Their persons being cultivated, their families were regulated. Their families being regulated, their states were rightly governed. Their states being rightly governed, the whole kingdom was made tranquil and happy.265

A strong sense of working from within and then expanding to the collective is evinced.

This, I argue, categorises the fundamental difference between the Confucian utopia and the

Morean utopia266: while both are grounded in the here-and-now and the meliorist spirit, the

latter is to be worked from bigger units to smaller ones. That is to say, with the efficient

functioning of social regulations and juridical implementation individuals are guaranteed

security and welfare, hence happiness, in the Morean utopia. On the Confucian utopia –

“the Great Unity” – society is able to be rightly maintained and to prosper if individuals are

first cultivated to be moral beings that know how to stay well behaved.

Indeed, the moral dimension has greater emphasis in Confucian teachings; yet this

does not mean that morality or ethics are overlooked in More’s Utopia. The difference lies

in the priorities: More’s Utopia is, in all actuality, not a free society, since everything

conforms to a certain set of routines and regulations. Everyone is required to be a law-

264 Henri Maler (1995) 351. Quoted in Vieira (2017) 67. 265 The original reads: 心正而後身修，身修而後家齊，家齊而後國治，國治而後天下平。Translation is taken from the Chinese Text Project website <http://ctext.org/liji/da-xue> 22 May 2016. 266 By the Morean utopia, I am referring strictly to the Renaissance utopias. As far as law is concerned, it should be noted that in some of the utopias of the Enlightenment the perspective is different: while in the Renaissance it is the good law that makes the good man, in the Enligthenment it is the good man that makes the good law.

http://ctext.org/liji/da-xue

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abiding citizen, and to operate within the bounds of legal codes; otherwise punishments –

even the death penalty – are to be expected. It may not do justice to generalise that all

Utopians do no wrong simply for fear of the consequential punishment; but how this

utopian society is built and organised does suggest such an interpretation. Contrary to this,

the Confucian utopia stresses the cultivation of each human being; namely, when everyone

reaches the highest moral standard – becoming jun zi – no law or punishment is required to

maintain the social order because “all under heaven” have already been taken care of.

Despite its implicitness, these selected passages from the Confucian canon affirm its

rationalistic thinking and also shed light on the fundamental difference between the two

utopias. We cannot deny the utopian propensity – if we were to give it a label – in

Confucian teachings, manifested specifically in the passage on the “Great Unity”.

2.2 PEACH BLOSSOM SPRING: A PASTORAL UTOPIA

Best known as “Peach Blossom Spring”, The Account of Peach Blossom Spring was, in fact, the

preface to the poem of the same name, written by the hermit poet Tao Yuanming (c.365-

427) in 421.267 It portrays an idyllic, peaceful, self-sufficient village that forms Tao’s vision

of an ideal community. Like Book Two of Utopia, The Poem of Peach Blossom Spring depicts

the customs, social relations, and structures of Tao’s ideal, whereas The Account conveys

how a fisherman came across this wonderland, how he was cordially received by the local

villagers whose ancestors escaped the Qin dictatorship and have since cut themselves off

from the outside world, and how he eventually returned to reality. The villagers asked the

fisherman to keep their presence confidential, who, nevertheless, made marks on the peach

trees on his way out in the hope of finding the way back in future, but to no avail. This tale

has been so prevalent that an idiom is created based upon this poem –世外桃源 [shi wai

tao yuan] – meaning peach spring beyond the terrestrial world.

Zhang Shibao, in his thesis on the imagery and literary archetypes of the peach in

the context of Peach Blossom Spring, argues that there are two differing models of the ideal

world in Western literature, namely paradise and utopia.268 Zhang Shibao uses “paradise” to

267 See Appendix for The Account and its English translation. 268 Zhang Shibao 張史寶, “Tao de shenhua yu wenxue yuanxing yanjiu” 桃的神話與文學原型研

究 [The Myth of the Peach and a Study of Its Literary Archetypes] (Diss. National Chengchi

University, 2005) 99. Even though the use of “archetypes” does require further reflection, here in

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refer to “樂園 (le yuan)” – literally “blissful garden” – whereas the common translation for

paradise in Mandarin is “天堂 (tian tang)” – also the rendition for “heaven” – which comes

with more of a religious connotation. Risking a generalisation, this taxonomy reveals how

“utopia” has often been associated with paradise. Zhang Shibao uses this argument to

introduce his analysis of the myth of the peach and its literary archetypes. By examining

Peach Blossom Spring, Shibao attempts to discern whether Tao Yuanming’s ideal world is a

world of paradise or of utopia. He believes that the golden age represented by paradise is

usually transient and that its value is only apparent once it is lost. The pursuit of this static,

retrospective paradise also means inevitable, permanent loss. According to Zhang Shibao,

the profound aspiration to reach Peach Blossom Spring, as expressed in Tao Yuanming’s

poem, is also based on this paradigm of “losing and pursuing”.269 Just as Yang Yucheng

argues that the peculiarity of Peach Blossom Spring lies in the fact that it is both utopia and

anti-utopia and that it is a story narrating how an ideal world gets lost,270 Shibao proposes

that Peach Blossom Spring is a reflection on the nostalgia for the Garden of Eden, which

manifests itself as the paradise myth of the “eternal return”.271 But since the fisherman and

those who attempt to re-locate the Peach Blossom Spring never find their way back, or into,

this heavenly-like realm, it creates a literary pattern of losing-and-pursuing, the aspiration

to which perpetually remains in this mythical cycle. This literary pattern of losing-and-

pursuing indeed gives Peach Blossom Spring a nostalgic touch; yet this nostalgia should not be

conflated with one longing for the Garden of Eden, as Zhang Shibao suggests. The

Garden of Eden carries a religious tone, with a strong sense of divine intervention.

However, the nostalgia presented in Tao’s vision is similar to that of Confucius’s Great

this particular case I will remain loyal to the word choice that Zhang opted for his thesis title. For the abstract, see http://nccur.lib.nccu.edu.tw/handle/140.119/39077. Since, throughout this chapter, there are three authors with the same surname, Zhang Longxi, Zhang Shibao, Zhang Huijuan, the given name of the latter two will be used in the discussion in order to avoid confusion. 269 Zhang Shibao 99. 270 Yang Yucheng 楊玉成, “Shiji mo de shengshi: ‘Taohuayuan bing shi’ de wenhua yu shehui” 世

紀末的省詩：「桃花源并詩」的文化與社會 [“Reflections at the End of the Century: The

Culture and Society of Peach Blossom Spring”], Zhong guo wen zhe yan jiu tong xun 中國文哲研究通訊

18.4 (1998) 83. Quoted in Zhang Shibao 100. Shibao suggests that Yan is using “utopia” loosely in his essay to refer to the ideal society, lacking a progressive, into-the-world spirit. Moreover, “anti-utopia” instead of “dystopia” is used here because Yang inserted parenthetical information

showing “anti-utopia” right after where the original term 反烏托邦 (fan wu tuo bang) appears.

However, it should be noted that the Mandarin translation for 反烏托邦 is usually confused: some

use “anti-utopia” whereas some use “dystopia”—the prefixes of both indicate anti-, against, or opposite. 271 See Zhang Shibao 106 as well as footnote number 35.

http://nccur.lib.nccu.edu.tw/handle/140.119/39077

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Unity as previously discussed; that is, a longing for the heyday during the reign of King

Wen of Zhou, “the perfect model for moral conduct and kingly rule”.272 Hence Tao’s

nostalgia and utopian vision are secular and rationalistic, modelled on an ancient paradigm

that in all actuality existed at a certain point in history.

Also examining paradise and utopia, Zhang Huijuan brings up this comparison:273

Even though both aspire to a more beautiful world, the paradise myth presents a static manifestation – a fixed point, an absolute reality. On the other hand, the fundamental feature of utopia is dynamic – an active land built from a mixture of the ideal and the real, as well as the good and the bad.274

For Zhang Huijuan, paradise is a self-sufficient, closed system, where simplicity is both the

requirement and the product of this static vision. This means that Peach Blossom Spring is

a paradisiacal realm rather than a utopia, as many have called it. Huijuan further postulates

that the late Qing novels were the first to incorporate the utopian spirit in Chinese literary

history. As opposed to the withdrawn and closed type of paradise, like the one penned by

Tao Yuanming, Huijuan argues, the late Qing novels painted a dynamic sketch of

numerous possibilities rooted in the here and now. She argues that the ideal microcosm

presented in those novels is the epitome of the macrocosm that is Qing China. She further

uses Peach Blossom Spring as a point of comparison, contending that “the [imagery of] ‘Peach

Blossom Spring’ in the late Qing novels is not at all reclusive or out of this world”.275 Her

elucidation bestows upon this semi-equivalence a fresher meaning – that is, its desiring of

goodness for all people rather than just for the self, its goal of reaching “this-worldly

paradise”,276 as well as its forward-looking mentality, all of which differentiate the utopian

impulse in those late Qing novels from the traditional Peach Blossom Spring spirit that has

a nostalgic and retrospective inclination.

272 Zhang Shibao 8. 273 Zhang Huijuan 張惠娟 , “Leyuan shenhua yu wutuobang─jian lun Zhongguo wutuobang

wenxue de rending wenti” 樂園神話與烏托邦──兼論中國烏托邦文學的認定問題 [“Paradise

Myth and Utopia – also on the Problems Identifying Chinese Utopian Literature”], Zhongwai wenxue

中外文學 15. 3 (1986) 80-81. 274 Translation is mine, except the terms in parentheses, which are included in the original text. The

original reads: 二者雖皆憧憬一美好世界, 然而樂園神話所呈現的,是一個『靜態』(static)的

面貌 ── 一個『凝滯的一點』 (a fixed point),一個『絕對的事實』(an absolute reality)。反之,

烏托邦的基本風貌,是『動態』(dynamic)的 ── 一個理想與現實交織、美好與醜惡交融所

構築的一個活潑的園地。 275 Zhang Huijuan 89. 276 Zhang Huijuan 89.

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From Zhang Huijuan’s analysis, it is clear that she categorises Peach Blossom

Spring as a static society like paradise and the late Qing fictions as dynamic, like those

utopias informed by the idea of progress.277 The fact that she uses the phrase “Peach

Blossom Spring spirit” to depict what we would have called the “utopian spirit” gives a fine

sense of how Peach Blossom Spring as a meme is rooted in classical Chinese literature, and

hence the reception of Utopia is highly liable to be influenced by, or refracted through, a

reading of Peach Blossom Spring.


This chapter set out by examining how the concept of utopia was first introduced into

Mandarin, followed by an investigation of the two Chinese counterparts, a pastoral and a

political utopia, with the aim of discerning how the reading of Utopia may have been

refracted through these preconceptions. From the introduction of the term “utopia” as a

dictionary entry, to how “wu tuo bang” was inserted in the translations of two important

English socio-political discourses, and how “utopia” was rendered as the Buddhist concept

Avatamsaka, a progression in understanding and translational strategies is evident here.

That is, during the mid-nineteenth century, as a dictionary entry, “utopia” was defined via

traditional concepts (from Chinese mythology or otherwise) so as to offer domestic

intelligibility to the target readers. With Yan Fu’s footnotes in his English translations of

the two influential socio-political discourses in which he introduced Utopia, a better

understanding was shown, that is, as a well-governed democracy.278 Liang Qichao and Ma

Junwu using a Buddhist term, Avatamsaka, may be taken as translating with domestic

intelligibility in mind as well, but it distinguishes itself in how it appropriates the time

perception and how it highlights a political take by making explicit its association with

socialism. Here we also see how the understanding of the concept of utopia moves from

static and retrospective interpretation to a progressive outlook with a political orientation.

With Ma’s critical essays published in the early 1900s, despite the fact that “utopia” was still

277 It should be noted that within the field of Utopian Studies, More’s Utopia is generally recognised as static as opposed to the utopias informed by the idea of progress, which are dynamic in nature. That More’s Utopia is static is understood in the sense that its social and political community has not changed since its establishment by Utopus. 278 More’s Utopia is not strictly a real democracy; yet compared to the milieu in which Yan Fu was living, Utopia indeed represented a relatively liberal democracy and possibly an ideal to look up to.

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translated as Avatamsaka, Utopia as a book and as a concept – finally – for the first time,

was systematically reviewed and introduced into Mandarin.

This textual journey then circled back to ancient China. Examining Confucius’s

Great Unity and Tao Yuanming’s Peach Blossom Spring against the Morean paradigm suggests

that the most fundamental watershed lies in retrospective versus prospective ideal

communities. While More’s Utopia presents an unmistakably forward-looking vision, the

Great Unity and Peach Blossom Spring are looking back toward a lost perfection, either an

ancient heyday or a pastoral paradise. However, unlike Arcadia, where a plateau has already

been reached regardless of human effort, the two classical Chinese utopias279 – again using

the term “utopia” loosely – are not simply backward-looking visions that allow only natural

or divine intervention. To use J. C. Davis’s words, “that ideal past has an important

presence in social life”. 280 This critical function, working as a measurement, is what

distinguishes the forward-looking drive common in the literary utopias following the

Morean paradigm. If one were to focus on Utopia’s literary and pastoral counterpart – Peach

Blossom Spring – a clear distinction may be drawn; that is, as Zhang Huijuan proposes, Utopia

offers a dynamic vision as opposed to a static one. The pastoral setting of Peach Blossom

Spring paints a static picture that requires no change, as if frozen in time. Yet two points

need to be stressed when examining the social presence of these two utopian realms. First

of all, while Utopia and a great majority of Western utopias manifest a prospective

idealisation281, I propose that Peach Blossom Spring is retrospective and prospective at the

same time. Its looking back toward an ancient perfection is, undeniably, what makes this

pastoral utopia retrospective. However, as discussed earlier, exactly because the ancient

heyday had existed and hence had a critical function of evaluating contemporaneous

society, Peach Blossom Spring is able to offer a prospective vision – in other words, only

through being modelled on a retrospective vision is the prospective utopia possible,

because the idealisations are based on the premise of recuperating an ancient heyday.

The second point, likewise, departs from the social presence. It is well established

279 As previously discussed, the Great Unity is not a literary utopia per se. However, it should not be disregarded because its retrospective vision resembles that of Peach Blossom Spring, and both look up to the heyday of the sagely rule of King Wen of Zhou. 280 Davis (1981) 7. 281 Being prospective shall not be confused with the idea of the future articulated in the French euchronias of the eighteenth century and the British euchronias of the nineteenth century. That Utopia is a prospective idealisation should be understood in line with the previously discussed concept of heterocosm, a testing ground for experimenting possibilities that is divorced from a backward-looking mentality.

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that the social regeneration of Utopia is operable from external forces, namely strict laws

and rules regulating the social order of Utopia. Such a differentiation is encapsulated in J. C.

Davis’s observation: “In Utopia, it is neither man nor nature that is idealised but

organisation. […] His prime aim is not happiness, that private mystery, but order, that

social necessity.”282 On the other hand, organisation and order in Peach Blossom Spring are

not the goal to be strived for: while organisation is barely mentioned, order is the by-

product of self-improvement. The sense of cultivating moral beings and hence being

capable of retrieving the ancient heyday is manifest in Peach Blossom Spring, where a trace of

Confucius’s Great Unity is distinct. To be concise, while both utopias possess a critical

function of measuring their contemporary societies, Utopia aims at a social rejuvenation,

whereas Peach Blossom Spring stresses self-regeneration, and the Great Unity is a conflation of

both.

282 Davis (1981) 7.

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CHAPTER THREE.

TRANSLATING UTOPIA: TOWARD A MANDARIN ETHOS

There has been a paucity of systematic study of Utopia, or More’s oeuvre in general for

that matter, in Mandarin Chinese. General readers tend to take Utopia at face value,

associating it with an ideal world without further qualification. This chapter begins with the

publication history of the Mandarin translations, each with an introduction to their

respective features such as style and material presentation. The second half of this chapter

presents a close reading of translational variants: firstly, analysing the nomenclatural play

that Thomas More crafted as part of the rhetorical design of the text;283 secondly, a close

reading of the peroration. On a larger scale, this chapter aims to fill the gap in the existing

scholarship on Utopia in Mandarin translations. On a more specific level concerning

translational nomenclatures, it intends to address: a) whether a pattern can be schematised

in More’s nominal play once it is rendered into a language utterly distinctive from Latin or

English; b) how these translations inform readers of the general strategies in terms of

translating a foreign text, in particular foreign names. As for peroration, the passage chosen

for translational comparison, will demonstrate how More’s intention might have appeared

differently as seen by the translators.

1 INTRODUCTION TO THE MANDARIN EDITIONS: STYLES AND MATERIAL

PRESENTATION

My project examines the fourteen standalone Mandarin translations published up until

2016, the quincentenary of Utopia’s first appearance. The first complete Mandarin edition

was translated by Liu Linsheng and published in 1935 by the Commercial Press in Shanghai.

Some believe that there could have been informal adaptations from the Japanese

translations prior to this 1935 edition. This is highly possible, because at that time Japanese

283 I borrow the phrase nomenclatural play, or nomenclature, from James Romm, who offers an insightful analysis of the invented names in Utopia. Romm uses “nominal play” at times in substitution for nomenclature. To avoid too frequent a repetition, I use these three interchangeably, in addition to neologism, as all point to More’s invented names. See Romm, “More’s Strategy of Naming in the Utopia”, The Sixteenth Century Journal 22.2 (1991): 173-83.

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translations of canonical Western works were one of the major sources for the intellectuals

of the early twentieth century to have a “West-looking” perspective. In fact, the preface of

Guo Xiangzhang’s 1966 edition was translated from Japanese, which verifies the Japanese

influence on the translation practices during the middle of the twentieth century. 284 It was

followed by a surge in translating Utopia in the mid-twentieth century. Three editions were

produced around the middle of the century: Dai Liuling in 1956 (Beijing), Liu Chengshao

in 1957 (Taipei), and Guo Xiangzhang in 1966 (Taipei). Before Dai Liuling’s two further

editions (1982 Beijing, 1997 Taipei), Liu Lihua produced a brand-new translation published

in Kaohsiung, Taiwan, in 1978. The beginning of the twenty-first century saw the

publication of another seven renditions: Song Meihua in 2003 (Taipei), Wu Lei in 2005

(Beijing), Wang Jin in 2007 (Xian), Hu Fengfei in 2007 and 2012 (Beijing), Tang Yi in 2011

(Xian), the collaborative effort of Sun Pinghua and He Shan in 2013 (Beijing), and the

most recent publication by Li Lingyan (2016).

Despite the seemingly abundant Mandarin versions, a systematic study of Utopia

has unfortunately not yet become part of mainstream scholarship. Even in English majors

in undergraduate programs in Taiwan, Utopia is studied in excerpts in the Norton Anthology

of English Literature, or as part of the reading of Renaissance literature that is itself only

offered as an elective module in Taiwan. Hsia Po-chia arrived at a similar observation in the

early 80s when he offered a brief overview of the Mandarin translations of Utopia, on

which he commented that “[t]he unadvanced state of More studies in China and Taiwan is

partly due to the general neglect of Renaissance and Reformation history”. 285 This

observation, unfortunately, still holds true a few decades later, despite the gradual

adjustment. In “The Utopia in Chinese” published in 1982, Hsia points out that “there is a

striking paucity of studies on Thomas More in Chinese language”.286 He notes that, as of

the early 1980s, the only work by More that had been translated into Mandarin was Utopia,

and that only two versions were available, namely Liu Linsheng’s in 1935 and Guo

Xiangzhang’s in 1966. Hsia’s findings present an obvious flaw; that is, he overlooked the

284 See, for example, Eisel Mazard’s “Thomas More’s Utopia in Chinese & Japanese Translation”, 03 May 2015, <http://a-bas-le-ciel.blogspot.com/2015/05/thomas-mores-utopia-in-chinese-japanese.html> 11 Feb 2016. This is a blog post, which is not as well researched or properly cited as a scholarly journal article; yet it makes the necessary comparison between the Chinese and Japanese translations, pointing out their overall failure in delivering More’s jocular witticism. In Yan Jianfu’s study, he also points out the possibility that the late Qing intellectuals might already have had access to Utopia before it was officially translated into Mandarin, possibly from a Japanese translation. See Yan Jianfu 143. 285 Po-chia Hsia, “The Utopia in Chinese”, Moreana 69 (March 1981): 108. 286 Hsia 107.

http://a-bas-le-ciel.blogspot.com/2015/05/thomas-mores-utopia-in-chinese-japanese.html


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other two versions prior to Guo’s rendition, Dai Liuling’s 1956 and Liu Chengshao’s 1957

editions. Grounds for the oversight of the latter are easier to relate to because it was a self-

printed volume, and thus might have been less well circulated. Yet this does not justify why

the fairly wide circulation of Dai Liuling’s translation would have slipped Hsia’s attention.

The failure to locate these two versions may have reaffirmed the paucity in More studies

and research into Utopia in the earlier days, ironically in an article that suggests this very

deficiency.

1.1 LIU LINSHENG’S UTOPIA (1935)287

Having served as editor of the Commercial Press and the Zhonghua Book Company, Liu

Linsheng (1894-1980) enjoyed a high literary status. His was the first Mandarin translation

of Utopia. It was published by the Commercial Press in Shanghai, in the series漢譯世界名

著 [Chinese Translations of the Worlds Classics]. Using Robinson’s 1551 translation as the

reference text,288 it is a rather compact volume, small in size. Altogether it has seventy-three

pages, with the first sixteen pages marked as Introductory Remarks. 289 A fairly short

bibliography succeeds the remarks, dated – in the Minguo calendar290 – December 23rd of

the year twenty-three, which corresponds to 1934. This volume also conforms to an earlier

printing convention: vertical writing, to be read from right to left. A few notable features

287 Liu Linsheng 劉麟生, trans., Wu tuo bang (Shanghai: Commercial Press, 1935). Liu Linsheng

(1894-1980) was a professor, the author of Chinese Political Ideals (1929), History of Chinese Literature (1932), among others, and served as the editor of the Commercial Press. Having received his bachelor degree in political science from Saint John’s University in Shanghai, Liu had a solid education in Chinese and English. 288 In the Introductory Remarks, Liu Linsheng mentions three English translations (Robinson’s, G. Burnet’s, and A. Cayley’s, without indicating the publication year of the latter two), and suggests that Robinson’s 1551 edition has been the most commonly used translation. See Liu 15. Hsia suggests that Liu adopted the edition of Robinson’s translation published by Everyman’s Library in London, 1926. See Hsia 107. 289 After Remarks, the page number resumes from one. At the closing paragraph of this introductory remark, Liu lists three English translations of Utopia. Gao Fang argues that Liu’s copy text is possibly Robinson’s, because Liu notes that Robinson’s translation is the most common (15). See Gao 191. I remain sceptical about Gao’s assertion, partly because the translational error “King Utopus” that has been perpetuated for centuries does not appear in Liu’s version. 290 The Minguo calendar, also called the Republic of China calendar is the system of numbering years currently used in Taiwan. This system was used in modern-day China from 1912 (after the overthrow of the Qing dynasty by Sun Yat-sen) until 1949, when the retreat of the Nationalist party to Taiwan and the founding of the People’s Republic of China led by the Communist Party took place.

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of this rendition are also possibly the result of this printing convention: the punctuation

marks are inserted outside the sentence – toward the right but in parallel to the immediately

preceding character – instead of being directly inside the line. Even the page numbers

follow the earlier convention, marked with Chinese characters rather than the Arabic

numerals that readers commonly see nowadays.

What is intriguing about this very first Mandarin edition is not just its occasional

archaic language, or its misinterpretation of the original text, but the fact that it is abridged.

Liu Linsheng’s abridged edition,291 from a research viewpoint, offers a wealth of potential

for examining what was left un-translated and the possible grounds for such omission (be it

deliberate exclusion or simple neglect of the reference text). Despite its being the first and

abridged edition, Gao Fang contends that a closer examination of the translated texts

reveals that this edition trumps Dai Liuling’s 1956 version. While I recognise the refined

poetics in Liu’s style, I disagree that it outweighs Dai Liuling’s rendition, primarily because

Liu’s, being an abridged translation, is less faithful to the original text. If Robinson’s 1551

English translation is described as a bare-bones effort, then this earliest Mandarin edition is

even more so, in the sense that it has none of the original ancillary items, let alone the fact

that the core text is not rendered in its entirety.

Its style is a mixture of the poetic and the colloquial: it is poetic in the sense that

Liu’s style is informed by classical writing (文言文), also known as literary Chinese;292 at the

same time, it has a colloquial touch because of Liu’s use of expletives. However, it is not

the kind of conversational style one would have read in Utopia’s English translations. Rather,

with its almost overused expletives – 咧 [lie] in particular, an expletive that is barely seen in

any written form, but more in online discussions or verbal chat – the whole reading

experience is rendered informal to the point that the serio-comic jest More had intended

seemed to have been reduced to mere frivolity.

The only paratextual item included in this very first Mandarin Utopia is an

introduction written by the translator Liu Linsheng, which serves as a reading guide. Gao

Fang suggests that the introductory remarks represent Liu’s initial research findings in

regards to Utopia.293 This introductory remark is divided into four parts: 1) a biography of

291 See Gao Fang, “Also on Utopia”, n.p. 292 Classical Chinese saw its decay in the early twentieth century. One of the objectives of the May Fourth Movement of 1919 (part of the New Culture Movement taking placing during 1915-1921)

was to replace classical Chinese with vernacular Chinese (白話文). 293 Gao 191.

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Thomas More; 2) the origins and influences of utopianism; 3) a summary and criticism of

More’s Utopia; 4) the writing style of Utopia and its (English) translations. The biographical

sketch begins with More’s year of birth, supposedly a fairly definite year, as all the scholarly

evidence suggests. What Liu states there, however, is “1480 or 1478”, without further

indication of his source. It is inferable that, in the early twentieth century, Western classics

were only beginning to enter the Chinese-speaking world, and that not having sufficient

sources at hand might have been inevitable.

Another intriguing textual presentation is that, next to the year 1480, parentheses

with additional information were added: “明憲宗成化十六年” [Ming Xianzong Chenghua

shiliu nian]294 – signifying “the sixteenth year during the reign of Cheng-hua Emperor of

the Ming Dynasty”. This is the only case among all Mandarin editions where a reference to

the year of a Chinese dynasty is made. The reason for adopting this way of documenting a

year is understandable: Liu Linsheng was born in the late Qing dynasty, and Imperial China

officially ended only in 1912. 295 For modern readers like us, having this additional

information for comparison may have caused extra effort to match the years of two

calendar systems, since we are no longer familiar with the corresponding dynastic years.

Liu’s early education, on the other hand, was very much rooted in the imperial frame of

mind. To use the Christian calendar – Anno Domini – was a novel practice; that Liu would

insert such parenthetical information for the ease of his contemporaneous readers would

not be seen as a surprise tactic. However, the interesting end result is, in removing the

foreignness by noting the Chinese dynastic year, Liu Linsheng’s translation is imbued with

what I venture to call a sense of foreign-domestication: the localisation of a source text by

inserting information that is no longer up-to-date creates a sense of alienation that is

paradoxically rooted in the target language.

The second section of the introductory remarks, devoted to the “causes and

effects” of utopianism, lays out how Liu Linsheng defines utopia and utopianism. He

explains in simple terms that Utopia comes from Latin – concurrently insinuating a lack of

awareness of its Greek root – and that Utopia means “無何有之鄉”, the land of nowhere.

294 “Ming” refers to the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644) in Imperial China, whereas “nian” means year. “Xianzong” is the title of the ninth Emperor of Ming China who reigned from 1464 to 1487, and “Chenghua” is the name of that era. It should be noted that the era name started from the Han Dynasty, around 140 BC. It differed from dynasty to dynasty: one emperor could claim more than one era name, but usually one emperor owned one era name, which was especially the case during the Ming and Qing dynasties. 295 Liu Linsheng was born in 1894, whereas the feudal dynasty of the Imperial China, Qing Dynasty, lasted from the seventeenth century to 1912.

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This phrase has a Taoist origin, quoted from 逍遙遊 (“Happy Excursions”) by Zhuangzi.

As discussed in Chapter One, this phrase essentially refers to either a place that has

nothing, an illusory place, or metaphorically insinuates a mental state that is carefree and at

peace. Liu further adds that utopianism is about any ideal socio-political amelioration, thus

providing a rather simplistic and straightforward definition. In a brief sketch of how

utopianism evolved, Liu concludes that utopian socialism could be deemed the end of

utopianism. Especially after Hegel’s theory of historical evolution, we learn that progress

does not come from a premeditated plan, but from constant chaos, and trial and error, that

ultimately amount to advancement. Using a few simple words, Liu sums up the gist of

utopianism: that social progress is achievable, but a perfect society is ultimately a fantasy.296

For an early translation whose identification of the author’s birth year was not definite,

Liu’s simplistic definition of utopianism comes off surprisingly accurately.

That said, we need to return to what it is that Liu equates Utopia with. Indeed, he

understands utopianism to be any theory or belief that is concerned with political or social

transformation. The analogy he makes to explain utopia, nevertheless, seems to have gone

in the opposite direction, since “wu he you zhi xiang” – the land of nothingness – has a

passive connotation, minimising any possible association with socio-political regeneration. I

suggest that the reason behind Liu’s use of “wu he you zhi xiang” resembles his adoption

of the dynastic year, in that both are to remove the foreignness and to create an idiomatic

equivalence for his readers. Aiming at creating domestic intelligibility, Liu already had an

idea of what might be more accommodating for readers – hence the use of the dynastic

year and this eminent phrase from the Taoist thinker Zhuangzi. What he did not realise was

that to equate them would be to appropriate a celebrated Taoist concept to illustrate a

construct that fundamentally was conceived to address political concerns.

In the section providing a summary and critique of More’s Utopia, Liu lists five

characteristics:297

1. Communal property, and hence no need for currency;

2. Centralisation of power, but government officials are elected by citizens;

3. The social order is based upon the family unit, supervised by the nation, so

as to improve the human species;

296 Liu 10. The original reads: 社會上的進步，是可以辦得到，但是完美的社會，始終是一種

幻想了。 297 Liu 14. Translation and emphasis are mine.

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4. Universalisation of education, with an emphasis on pragmatism and the

cultivation of morality, as well as life-long training;

5. Freedom of religious belief.

Of the five points, the fifth appears to be refraction: either a result of Liu’s

misinterpretation, or as a less cautious word option resulting from directly quoting the

original text. There is indeed a level of religious tolerance in Utopia, but to call it religious

freedom is an overstatement, since there appears to be a caveat in almost every aspect of

Utopian life, including religion.298 In addition to an instance of refraction, the third on the

social order is of particular interest. The first half of the sentence is accurate, but

concluding this line with “to improve the human species” is a sentiment that is not

pronounced in Utopia. The line reads “改進人種”, which literally means to improve the

human species. It has much more to do with eugenics, a theme that does appear in sub-

genres of utopian literature. In fact, the portrayal in Utopia where couples examine each

other’s body before marriage so as to “avoid bodily defects” can be deemed as a practice of

eugenics. 299 As Claeys notes, “Utopias have thus commonly stressed the physical

improvability of human stock as a key goal, usually through the promotion of a healthier

life, and from the Renaissance increasingly through scientific advancement”300 In other

words, if a better future workable by human contrivance is the modern utopia and the one

achievable by divine intervention is a utopian prefiguration, I suggest that what Liu

Linsheng analogises here – to improve the human species – is in fact a foreshadowing of a

postmodern utopia. There is no evidence from where in Utopia Liu reaches such a

conclusion regarding improving the human species. There was a surge of utopian writing

and sci-fi writing around the turn of the twentieth century in China, coinciding with the

time when the Republic of China led by the Nationalists overthrew the Qing Dynasty

(1912), as well as a few notable works that do bring up scenarios introducing eugenics, such

298 For instance, different religions are practiced in Utopia, as long as all Utopians acknowledge and worship Mithras, the one Supreme Being. For further analysis, see Sanford Kessler, “Religious Freedom in Thomas More’s Utopia”, The Review of Politics 64.2 (2002). 299 Gregory Claeys, “Introduction: Socialism and the “Eugenic Turn” in British Utopianism, 1875-1900” The European Consortium for Political Research (2004): 8. <https://ecpr.eu/Filestore/PaperProposal/6f6bdba6-e557-4592-b5fc-e618e0d13fd4.pdf>. For more discussion on eugenics, See Claeys, “The Origins of Dystopia: Wells, Huxley and Orwell”, The Cambridge Companion to Utopian Literature, ed. Gregory Claeys (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010). 300 Claeys (2004): 8.

https://ecpr.eu/Filestore/PaperProposal/6f6bdba6-e557-4592-b5fc-e618e0d13fd4.pdf

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as Liang Qichao’s The Future of New China (1902)301 and Wu Jianren’s New Story of the Stone

(1905).302 The mention of improving the human species indicates that, if not misreading

Utopia, Liu might have been attempting to catch up with the literary trend of eugenics in

his translation.

1.2 DAI LIULING’S UTOPIA (1956, 1982, 1997)303

Perhaps it was because of the wide circulation of his works as well as his fame as the

translator of Shakespeare’s Sonnets that created the illusion that it was he who brought

Utopia into Mandarin: Dai Liuling has been mistaken at least two times in documented

record to be the person who first translated Utopia into Mandarin.304 He contributed three

editions to the Mandarin Utopias: Sanlian (Beijing, 1956), Commercial Press (Beijing, 1982),

and Zhiwen (Taipei, 1997). The overall commonalities of these three renditions are that

they all include the first prefatory epistle from Thomas More to Peter Giles, the core text, a

selection of the correspondence between Erasmus and More, and an overview of the

various editions and translations of Utopia. Of all the epistles that were included in early

modern editions aiming at endorsement and buttressing the text’s authenticity, only More’s

first epistle to Giles survived in this cultural transference. This crucial epistle was entitled

“Prefatio” in the first four Latin editions, and perhaps this was the reason Dai Liuling

chose to include it, and possibly he left out all the others due to the limitations of textual

space. Yet, this economic reason – textual or otherwise – would not suffice to explain why

Dai included the other non-authorial paratexts, which in all actuality take up a rather

lengthy amount of space in the printed volume. One possible interpretation is that Dai’s

301 Liang Qichao 梁啟超 , Xin Zhongguo Weilai Ji 新中國未來記 [The Future of New China]

(Guangxi: Guanxi Normal University Press, rpt. 2008). It was originally an unfinished novel, with only five chapters written during Liang’s lifetime (1873-1929). Liang was born in Guangdong, China, one of the Chinese Enlightenment thinkers. 302 Wu Jianren 吳趼人, Xin Shitou Ji 新石頭記 [New Story of the Stone] (Shanghai: Gailiang

Xiaoshuo She, 1908). Wu (1866-1910) was a late Qing novelist, who was noted for his vernacular writing style aimed at a readership without formal classical education. 303 Dai Liuling 戴鎦齡, trans., Wu tuo bang 烏托邦 [Utopia] (Beijing: Sanlian Publishing Co., 1956;

Beijing: Beijing Commercial Press, 1982; Taipei: Zhiwen Publishing Co., 1997). 304 For instance, the chapter title in the collected volume that pays homage to the intellectuals of Wuhan University during the Second Sino-Japanese War reads, “Dai Liuling: The Person who brought Utopia into Mandarin”. See Zhang Zaijun 41.

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editions were aimed at a more scholarly and systematic introduction of Utopia, as well as

the milieu in which they were conceived.

The serio-comic jest designated by More might not have registered in Dai’s reading,

or it may have been less of a focus than associating this canonical work with socialism and

communism, the agenda of which was made specific in the preface to the 1982 rendition

published in Beijing. For instance, in discussing how labour creates collective wealth, Dai

refers to it as being appraised by Lenin to be the great socialist thinking, the exact sentence

of which is removed from the 1997 Zhiwen edition published in Taiwan.305 The 1956

Sanlian edition even includes a list of reference books, which does not exist in the other

two editions. This reference list is divided into three categories: classical works of Marxist-

Leninism, historical data, and pertinent literature on Thomas More. Six titles are included

in the first category on Marxist-Leninism, which reveals a trace of the ideological

preference behind the choices.

As far as its core texts are concerned, the 1997 edition is a reproduction of its 1982

cousin. Its partially different non-authorial paratexts suggest a turn in ideological focus: for

instance, the essay on the historical meanings of Utopia that highlights its socialist

orientation was removed from the 1997 Taiwan edition, and there is no longer a

recommended reading list for Marxism. However, what is to be noted is the reference texts

of the previous two editions. The first edition was based upon the 1912 volume edited by

W. D. Armes (with Robinson as its source text) and the 1953 Russian translation published

by the Russian Academy of Sciences. This edition is translated from Latin, and the

commentaries are by A. I. Malenin and F. A. Petrovskii, with a preface by Vyacheslav

Petrovich Volgin (Moscow: Publishing House of Academy of Sciences of USSR, 1953). It

contains a 34-page introduction and a postscript plus commentaries, which verify the

allographic items included in Dai’s translation.306 To be exact, what was taken from the

Russian edition includes: chapter titles, paragraph layout, definitions, and errata of certain

major sentences and words. More importantly, the essay on Utopia’s historical meanings and

all other appendices are extracted from it. All these formed the basis of the paratextual

apparatus, mostly non-authorial – or allographic in Genette’s taxonomy – in Dai’s 1956

305 The original sentence reads “这些就是列宁所称许的‘伟大的老空想家们提出来的’思想”.

See Dai (1982) 9. This sentence is absent in the same passage in the Zhiwen edition, see Dai (1997) 21. 306 I thank Martin Procházka for locating this Russian source for me. Based on the Russian edition, Dai’s 1956 translation is charged with Soviet influence. Gao Fang questions Dai’s choice of the reference text, given that Dai majored in English literature and pursued advanced studies at the University of Edinburgh. See Gao (2017) 193.

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edition. This first translation of Dai’s, with its heavy commentary (there are 230 endnotes

translated from the Russian edition), offers readers a more thorough understanding of

More’s thought, and, furthermore, according to Gao, it is a manifestation of the Soviet

scholar’s research on Utopia and how it was disseminated in Russia.307 This 1956 edition,

therefore, is an end product refracted through Dai’s interpretation and, more so, through a

Soviet lens of the 1950s since a large part of the allographic items are extracted from the

Moscow edition.

The end product of Dai’s retranslation during the 70s is the 1982 edition published

by Beijing Commercial Press, later to be also published in Taiwan in 1997 with changes in

paratextual items. In the translator’s preface to the 1997 Zhiwen edition, Dai claimed to

have made major revision of the whole book toward the end of the 70s, from which the

English reference text was no longer Robinson’s but the fourth volume of The Complete

Works of St. Thomas More published by Yale University Press.308 By inference, the Russian

source was dropped entirely. This Yale edition, published in 1965 was, according to

Elizabeth McCutcheon, a breakthrough in the study of More’s Utopia.309 Even though Dai

Liuling himself claimed to have used the first four Latin editions as major reference points,

this claim is dubious because there is no evidence showing Dai had profound knowledge

of Latin, nor are any of his prolific writings or translated works based upon a Latin work.

It is possible that at best Dai used the bilingual version and secondary sources from those

Latin editions, which he believed to be a sufficient substitute for primary texts. He further

pointed out that both G. C. Richards’ and J. Churton Collins’ editions were his source for

the revisions. 310 Dai’s protégé Professor Li Dao, then in London, assisted him in

transcribing the correspondence between More and Erasmus – hence a collection of

epistles between the two Renaissance humanists is appended in all three of Dai’s

translations.311 Interestingly, even though Dai’s second edition was based upon a different

source text, all these ancillary elements that appeared in 1956 were not left out in the

subsequent editions. Dai’s “re-translation”, in this case, applies only to the main text.

307 Gao (2017) 193. 308 Dai (1997) 25-26. The bilingual Yale edition was edited by Edward Surtz; the Latin copy-text was the 1516, 1517, and 1518 editions, whereas the English text was a revision of G. C. Richards’s translation. Dai himself notes that he began translating Utopia at the beginning of the 50s, and the final product was entrusted to Sanlian to be published. 309 McCutcheon, “Review Essay” 275. 310 Dai (1997) 20. 311 There may be confusion in terms of time frame, since Dai’s first edition (1956) already included this collection of letters between More and Erasmus, and yet Dai claims that this effort was only made during the 70s when he was working on the revision.

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Dai’s three editions, however, have different allographic prefatory items. In Dai’s

first edition, there is no preface, only the essay on the historical significance of Utopia by

Soviet scholar Vyacheslav Petrovich Volgin. In the essay discussing Utopia’s historical

significance, the purpose is similar to that of the commendatory verses in the Latin

editions of Utopia – to endorse and to exalt Utopia, not just its literary value but its political

relevance. This essay praises Utopia in relation to The Communist Manifesto. In fact, this essay

is less about endorsing Utopia than paying tribute to Marxism-Leninism and communist

thinking. Toward the end of this essay, it is asserted that only when socialist thinking is

combined with Marx’s genius theory can socialism transform itself from being utopian and

illusory to a realistic force of life.312 What is insinuated here is that, even though More’s

work is rightly exalted as the pioneer of socialism, and that not one work in socialist

history could outweigh Utopia until the French Revolution, all this has to be coupled with

Marx’s genius theory. From here, it is not difficult to see the ideology of the editorial board

and/or the translator who decided to include this essay, especially in the 1956 Sanlian

edition where it is located at the beginning of the volume, after the portrait of More and

before the main texts. The priority as well as the textual location of this non-authorial

paratext proves even more intriguing when compared with the third edition published in

Taiwan in 1997, in which this essay is deleted entirely.

The second edition includes two prefatory elements: a publication note by the

editorial office and the translational preface by Dai Liuling himself. This publication note is

not intended for Utopia, but rather for the translational series of the World Classics. This

note opens with the line commenting that:

Our publishing house has always valued transferring and translating the world classics. Starting from the 50s, we have been devoted to translating and publishing those classical works from before the birth of Marxism and to introduce representative works from different schools. […] We firmly believe that only by amplifying our brains via the wealth of knowledge created by human beings are we able to build a modernised socialist society.313

312 Dai (1956) 15. 313 Emphasis mine. “Transferring and translating” is the literal translation of “移譯 ”; both

characters convey the meaning of carrying across. The original reads: 我館歷來重視移譯世界各

國學術名著。從五十年代起，更致力於翻譯出版馬克思主義誕生以前的古典學術著作，

同時適當介紹當代具有定評的各派代表作品。[…] 我們確信只有用人類創造的全部知識

財富來豐富自己的頭腦，才能夠建成現代化的社會主義社會。

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What is clear here are a few lines with an explicit ideological message – it explains the

selection criteria, and the selected works are meant to be read pedagogically, with the

objective of helping to shape a socialist country. The note was written in January 1982 by

the editorial team of the Beijing Commercial Press, which understandably cannot be found

in the third edition published in Taiwan, where socialist thinking has never been part of the

ideology. It is precisely this type of allographic appendage that evinces how broadly Utopia

can go with and be applicable to various supplementary items.

1.3 LIU CHENGSHAO’S UTOPIA (1957)314

The third Mandarin translation, by Liu Chengshao, came almost two decades after the first.

Even though Dai Liuling’s version of Utopia was published a year before Liu Chengshao’s,

the latter was not informed of Dai’s rendition, which seemed to have been unavoidable,

given the political tension between China and Taiwan at that time. The book cover is

coloured dark red, with the three big characters Wu Tuo Bang printed vertically. There is no

mention of the author or the translator on the book cover. The first mention of More is

on the second page of the translator’s preface, where utopia is defined. Readers are only

informed of who the translator is towards the end of the preface, when Liu Chengshao

signs off with a name, date, and place. This reflects the early phenomenon that a translated

work tended to be less thoroughly and faithfully re-presented, manifest already in the

display of its author’s name. Like the convention detected in Linsheng’s version, this

volume was also printed vertically, with a special font as well as relatively large line spacing,

and with page numbers in Chinese characters. The punctuation marks, however, no longer

follow the earlier convention but are marked in the fashion that is seen nowadays. A closer

examination suggests that the edition’s reference text is Liu Linsheng’s 1935 edition, mainly

because both are abridged editions and contain none of the authorial paratexts, and some

of the mistakes or translational peculiarities are detected in both. The wording and

expression are not always the same, but the interpretational mistakes are very often

identical; for instance, both renditions insert a parenthetical note indicating that Hythloday

refers to “the ideal person”.

314 Liu Chengshao 劉成韶, trans., Wu tuo bang 烏託邦 [Utopia] (Taipei: World Bookstore/self-

printed, 1957).

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Liu Chengshao (c.1932-?) was a freelance translator, and not much of his

biographical background can be traced, except that he served in the army and retreated

with the Nationalist party to Taiwan in 1949.315 He did translate another work: a version of

Niccolò Machiavelli’s The Prince was published in 1966. This other translation of his is

mentioned in passing here because both could be read as political treatises and more so

because both of these works were self-published – not only is this unique among Utopia’s

translations, it is a rather peculiar case in translations of all kinds, then and now.

The first page after the book cover comes with a dedication that reads:

Dedicated to

My forever most-revered departed friend, Ms Chang Yixuan316

I have examined two copies of this edition, one from Tunghai University in Taiwan and

one from Hong Kong Baptist University, both of which contain the translator’s autograph

as well as a one-line note dedicated to the respective university. Liu Chengshao’s rendition

is a relatively personal one, not just from the fact that he self-published it but also that he

included, to use Genette’s taxonomy, an intimate paratext, a dedication to Ms Chang, as well

as a private paratext, the one-line handwritten note addressing the recipient universities.

These practices demonstrate the role of books as material artefacts “in the reader’s social

life, family history, professional practices, political commitments, and devotional rituals”;317

in Liu Chengshao’s case, the intimate and private paratexts reveal a trace of both his social

and personal life.

This 1957 rendition has fourteen lengthy endnotes by the translator (marked as 譯

者註 [translator’s notes]). Equally interesting is that some additional information is

sometimes not listed under endnotes, but rather inserted inside the main text, separated by

parentheses. A few features can be gathered from the above examples: the way Liu

Chengshao composes his own notes reinforces the impression that this is a rather

315 Lai Tzu-yun Lai 賴慈芸, “Youling yizhe yu liuwang wenren – zhanhou Taiwan yizhe shengtai

chutan” 幽靈譯者與流亡文人 — 戰後台灣譯者生態初探 [Ghost Translators and Exiled Men

of Letters – A Description of Translators in Post-war Taiwan], Fanyixue yanjiu jikan 翻譯學研究集

刊 17 (2014): 35. 316 Translation is mine. The original reads:

獻給

我永遠最敬愛的亡友常儀璇小姐. 317 William H. Sherman, Used Books: Marking Readers in Renaissance England (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008) xiii. Quoted in Jennifer Richards and Fred Schurink, “Introduction: The Textuality and Materiality of Reading in Early Modern England”, Huntington Library Quarterly 73.3 (2010): 345.

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personalised, non-official, and possibly not peer-reviewed translation. A similar impression

is also generated from the translator’s preface, in which Liu addresses the actual reader

directly in a fairly colloquial tone. It reads as follows:

This book is mostly based on More’s intention, but the footnotes are the translator’s interruption.318 If someone were to say: Are you not exaggerating? I believe that people are all in a frenzied state of fury seeing a play; can they demonstrate any refined manners? Don’t forget that this is Utopia.319

Liu Chengshao has already anticipated possible reader response, especially as this book was

relatively freshly introduced into the sinophone cultures. He assumes that many of the

scenes and commentaries depicted in More’s Utopia may have created a sense of

exaggeration and hence an unrealistic vibe. From what modern readers already understand,

Utopia is an imaginary work and a level of fictionality is inevitable. However, from this

passage, it appears that Liu Chenghao presumes that readers are treating Utopia as a play,

hence disregarding the iconoclastic nature of Utopia. This, on the other hand, reflects that

Liu has taken in only the serious intention of Utopia – overlooking the jesting part – and has

attempted to translate this book with a pedagogical and iconoclastic purpose.

Liu Chengshao’s translation is also unique in significant ways. It is an edition

abundant in explanatory notes. In addition to the parenthetical information, Liu

Chengshao supplies his own endnotes after each subchapter. These translator’s notes are

elaborate and lengthy. In most cases, instead of elucidating the original text, the endnotes

read as if expressing the translator’s own thoughts on particular issues, and the first-person

pronoun is frequently adopted. Such an arrangement makes reading it almost like

experiencing two texts in juxtaposition.

That the translator’s own words are presented as being part of the original text is

what I find most intriguing. Those additions indeed give the book a more personal touch.

It is no longer just a translation; it is what makes Utopia not the Morean Utopia per se, but

the Utopia of Liu Chengshao. With Liu’s translation, Utopia is refracted through Liu’s

commentary, which is blended with the original text. There is a high degree of liberty in

the way Liu Chengshao translate Utopia, as a result of which this Utopia almost become a

318 The original phrase for “interruption” is “插嘴”, which is very conversational, not at all a

refined way of saying “interruption”, especially in a book. “插嘴” literally means “insert mouth”. 319 Liu Chengshao 3-4. Translation is mine. The original reads: 本書多是照莫爾的意思，不過註

是譯者的插嘴，如果有人說：你未免給他擴大其詞了？我想人不都是在看戲的急怒裡，

能有修養嗎，那就不要忘了這是烏託邦。

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re-written work. Three examples will be presented here to illustrate how More’s Utopia is

refracted through Liu Chengshao’s translation, additions, and occasional misconceptions:

The first two are related to happiness and what facilitates happiness, whereas the third

appears at the closing of the book to wrap up this fictional work.

A lengthy section in Utopia is devoted to the discussion of happiness, what

constitutes it, and how to pursue such happiness. It begins with the nature of happiness,

and that the consensus among the Utopians is that “human happiness consists largely or

wholly in pleasure”. Before it moves on to discussing physical and mental pleasure, there

appears a passage in Chengshao’s edition that is clearly not taken from the original text:

The most valuable happiness is love and creation, nothing is grander or happier than those: the former is about true love and passion. Even if it is limited, it remains noble and ardent. If we expand the scope of love to the love for all, then it is the love loaded with immortality! As for the latter, creation is the meaning of shared happiness, which gives such great pleasure and honour to people.320

If one were not familiar with the original text of Utopia, one would have little reason to

doubt that this passage was authorial. As abstract as it may be, this passage fits into the

context, and it makes universal sense. What is intriguing is that “love” is the one thing that

is not discussed in More’s Utopia. The closest it comes is when More, speaking via Raphael

Hythloday, proposes that the first bodily pleasure includes sexual intercourse, or delivery of

offspring, as some translations go. Why would Liu Chengshao insert this particular

passage? What urged him to write it or what was his intention beyond this translational

intervention? Could this have been in any sense connected to his dedication to Ms Chang

Yixun? One can only speculate.

The second example with regard to facilitating happiness is a more rational one

than the previous case. When Hythloday recounts what the Utopians have learnt from the

outside world, a list of classical works is given, including works by Aristotle and Euripides.

He further praises how Utopians are advanced in the medical field and that they have learnt

paper-making as well as print technology from outside travellers, namely the Europeans.

This is where the non-authorial text comes in:

320 I am reserved about the use of “creation” in this translated text. It is indeed a direct translation

of “創造”, but judging by its context, it may well refer to procreation. The original reads: 最有價

值的快樂，沒有比愛情創造再大再快樂的了：前者真愛和熱情，就是在狹隘裡，也多麼

高超而熱烘烘，要是再擴大博愛於眾情，那快樂多充滿著不朽呢！尤其是後者，創造更

代表著共同快樂的意義，給人家是多大的快樂與榮幸。

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They are now very much developed in scientific research, trying to improve life using scientific methods and to increase production with scientific expertise. They apply science to all kinds of human happiness, aiming to reach a blissful scientific life. With their freedom of thought, there is no restriction in terms of speech; right and justice can thus be practiced, and rationalism is exercised ever more smoothly; creation is followed by creation, and people have truly reached the state of equality, freedom and fraternity.321

Again, this passage fits right into the context and even serves as a fine conclusion to the

discussion of scientific development in Utopia. This add-on, however, has manipulated

More’s design for the Utopian community. If one were to read Sir Francis Bacon’s New

Atlantis (1624), the first half of this passage would reasonably put everything into context.

Yet this is Utopia, where the emphasis on scientific advancement is not part of More’s

grand scheme. Every single sentence in this passage makes perfect sense; in fact, all points

raised here may well apply to an eu-topia. More does not explicitly refer to freedom of

speech or freedom of thought in Utopia. However the way he depicts the dining scene and

the morning lectures reflects a certain level of freedom of expression as well as choice.322

Thus, from the second part of this passage, despite its being a non-authorial appendage

making itself out to be the main text, it can be inferred that the translator is aiming at a

more analytical entry point for actual readers to access – as well as assess – the

circumstances in Utopia. Moreover, the socio-political environment Liu Chengshao lived in

was relatively restricted, without much freedom of speech. This additional text may likely

be Liu’s own ideal and wish; hence he ended this passage with the slogan from the French

Revolution, only in a different order – equality, freedom, and fraternity.

Utopia ends with the reportorial More commenting how he cannot completely

agree with what Hythloday says, and that he can only wish rather than expect to see these

things happen in his own society. In several translations, there is one line, as if it is a stage

direction, narrating that Hythloday’s afternoon talk about the politics of Utopia is

321 The original reads: 現在他們對科學的研究都非常進步了，用科學的方法去改良生活，用

科學的技術來增加生產，把科學用到於一切的人類幸福上，成為幸福的科學人生人。配

合著他們的思想自由，言論不受限制，正義公理得以伸張，理性更能有暢通，創造繼起

著創造，人民真正是到了平等自由博愛的境地。 322 Utopian citizens are encouraged to take part in hearing lectures that interest them. At meal times, the youngsters are encouraged to talk and freely express themselves, but this is in order for the elderly to find out the former’s disposition and temperament. Therefore my emphasis is on the “certain” level of freedom, in that the freedom always comes with a presupposition or a caveat.

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completed here. Yet in this 1957 translation, there is another passage immediately

succeeding it:

Let us look at the Utopian politics and compare it with our own realities. It is as if our rulers have been corrupted by wealth and power, bedazzled by enjoyment and lasciviousness. Can we not appeal to our countrymen and beseech them to be prepared for the consequences that ensued?323

This appeal could have passed off as More’s own words to his contemporaneous readers.

However, in fact, it is Liu directly addressing his own actual readers, the readers in Taiwan

during the mid-twentieth century that had undergone martial law (1949-1987). A universal

truth that is applicable to various cultures and different time frames – that is what makes a

classic a classic, whose enlightening effects are capable of moving beyond temporal and

spatial boundaries. This is not to legitimise Liu’s deliberate insertion of his own words into

the main text, but they do urge the readers to question their own social realities and to

contemplate what inspired Liu’s inclusion of this passage.

1.4 GUO XIANGZHANG’S UTOPIA (1966)324

Published in the mid-1960s, Guo Xiangzhang’s is the second complete translation of Utopia.

As with Liu’s two translations, no authorial paratext is included. The second page

immediately succeeding the book cover is a copy of the original title page, while on the

opposite side is a one-line dedication that reads: “We hereby express our thanks to

UNESCO for having funded the publication of this book”.325 This is the only translation

of Utopia sponsored by UNESCO. In 1971, Taiwan withdrew from the United Nations; no

other editions or reprints received the same sponsorship.

Preceding the main text, there is a lengthy biographical account of Thomas More.

What distinguishes it is that this biographical sketch was not written by Guo Xiangzhang

323 Translation is mine. The original reads: 我們看看烏託邦的政治，對照我們各國的現實，好

像我們各國的主政者，都被祿位腐化醺醉了，享受和淫樂弄昏迷了似的，我們不能不向

各國的同胞呼籲了，我們能準備接受其後果嗎! 324 Guo Xiangzhang郭湘章, trans., Wu tuo bang 烏托邦 [Utopia] (Taipei: Guoli bianyi guan, 1966).

The translator’s name that appears on the English title page is “Ko Hsiang Chang”, which is using the Wade-Gilos system. However, for the sake of consistency, I use the Hanyu pinyin system throughout, which reads “Guo Xiangzhang”. 325 The original reads: 本書由聯合國教育科學文化組織補助出版謹此致謝.

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himself or the editorial team; rather it is a translation of the work of 戶川秋骨 Shūkotsu

Togawa (1871-1939), a Japanese scholar who specialised in British and American literature.

This biography is so far the most extensive and descriptive introduction – though not

necessarily as analytical as Dai Liuling’s version – among all Mandarin editions of Utopia. It

is forty-eight pages long, which, in a volume that altogether has 142 pages, takes up a major

proportion and may even suffice to form a study in itself.

There is no mention of the source text of Guo’s translation. Judging by the fact

that Guo opted to translate Togawa’s preface, one may venture that the Japanese rendition

served as his reference. While Hsia Po-chia suggests the likelihood of this, 326 a close

reading of the text indicates otherwise. When illustrating Hythloday’s Ulysses-like

disposition, the reportorial More comments that “this attitude would have cost him dear, if

God had not been gracious to him” (45, 47). The translational error of rendering “cost

him dear” to “買著鹿” – literally “buying (a) deer” – reveals that Guo’s source text is

English. 327 Such an absurd, nonsensical rendering is evidence of Guo’s negligence in

misreading dear to deer, and Guo’s direct-translation of this mistake indicates that his

version was modelled on an English edition, rather than a Japanese one.

This forty-eight-page introduction is divided into twelve sections, aimed at

Togawa’s readership, namely the Japanese. Guo did not alter Togawa’s words when editing

this introduction. For instance, when stating that More was from London, Togawa writes:

“More was a Londoner. Expressing it with our (Japanese) words, he would be from

Shitamachi (New Downtown) in London.”328 Shitamachi is the downtown, or “the lower

parts of a town” in Japanese, a historical district of central Tokyo, historically connected

with merchants, tradesmen, and artisans. As such, Togawa appeared to suggest that More

was from the business class living in the city of London. Unlike the American

“downtown”, Shitamachi is geographically and culturally specific; however, by generalising

Shitamachi to downtown, Guo Xiangzhang seemed to be at a loss with the Japanese word

and context. It is self-evident that the information – “Japanese” – inside the parentheses is

326 In the essay reviewing the two Mandarin translations of Utopia, Hsia suggests the possibility that, although no reference was given, Guo’s source may well have been the Japanese translation. See Hsia 107. 327 To say either “to buy a deer” or “bought a deer” in Japanese would be “鹿を買う”、”鹿を買

った” (reads: shika o kau; shika o katta), which proves that Guo’s rendering comes from his

misunderstanding of the English text (from “cost him dear” to “cost him deer”) rather than from a Japanese source. 328 Guo 3. The original reads: 摩爾是倫敦人，若用我們（日本人）的話表示出來，他是倫敦

的下町子（新市區）的人。

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an insertion by the translator. Making this analogy indeed carves an easier entry point to

More’s life for Japanese readers. However, this is not necessarily the case for Chinese or

Taiwanese readers. Undeniably it could produce the same desired effect as that for the

Japanese readers for the elder generations who, for instance, had undergone the Japanese

Occupation of Taiwan (1895-1945) and those who had studied or lived in Japan, which was

not an uncommon phenomenon. Yet for those who had not received a Japanese education,

or for those relatively unfamiliar with this culture, an analogy like this barely helps. It might

have appeared trendy for some, but it no longer has the function of advancing domestic

intelligibility.

This is not the only case where a Japanese reference appears. When discussing why

More composed Utopia in Latin, Togawa offers his own insight:

At that period of time, writing prose or verse in Latin was exactly like our people (the Japanese) composing Chinese prose or Chinese poetry.329 […] Milton’s Latin poems have been universally acclaimed, which I believe is like those Chinese prose and verses making their way to the literary circles of various countries. If one were to argue that More wrote Utopia in Latin simply because he was avoiding the possibility of persecution, I’d rather think that it is an idea not worthy of adoption.330

Togawa is not the only person who refutes the reason behind More’s use of Latin being for

the sake of avoiding censorship. Writing from a Japanese point of view, he offers a novel

comparison of this choice of language. Such an analogy is not to be found elsewhere in the

Mandarin translations, which marks its epochal peculiarity when Taiwan was going through

a transitional period from the Japanese Occupation (1895-1945) into the Martial Law

period (1949-1987).

Stylistically speaking, Guo’s rendition is clear and conversational (especially with the

frequency of expletives used), but at the same time idioms are adopted as well, making the

whole reading experience closer to a lively text that speaks directly to its readers. It is, like

the 1957 Liu Chengshao edition, rich in explanatory notes; yet unlike its predecessor, Guo’s

endnotes do not deviate from explaining the main texts. There are thirty-one endnotes

329 Some understand this “Chinese poetry” – 漢詩 (han shi) – as the poetry written in classical

metrical format called “文言詩” (wenyan shi; classical poems), which serves as a direct contrast to

the vernacular poems. 330 Guo 16. The translation is mine. The original reads: 當時以拉丁文作文賦詩，正如吾人（日

本人）作漢文漢詩一樣，並無甚可驚異之處 [. . .] 彌爾頓的拉丁文詩是馳名國際的，我以

為正如漢文漢詩流傳到許多國家的文壇一般。如果說摩爾顧及到用英文寫這本書會有危

險性纔以拉丁文寫成，我毋寧以為是不足採信的想法。

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appended to the First Book, and twenty after the Second Book. All fifty-one notes are

concise explanations of proper nouns appearing in the main text, be they real historical

figures, toponyms, or invented names that are part of More’s elaborate jest. Unlike Liu

Chengshao’s endnotes which are overtly elaborate and may have functioned less as

explication than as the mouthpiece of the translator, Guo’s fifty-one endnotes are

condensed, strictly giving background information or explaining etymological origins. Hsia

Po-chia criticises Guo’s translation as a “disappointment because it does not represent an

improvement over the 1935 edition”.331 It is a dubious evaluation, however, firstly because

Hsia’s review essay examines only the 1935 edition and the 1966 edition, which he believes

to be the only available Mandarin translations of Utopia at the time he was writing (1981),

overlooking the other two versions prior to the 60s, meaning his assessment lacks a fair

basis. Secondly, Guo’s translation does demonstrate a notable progress from the very first

Mandarin edition, especially so as it is no longer an abridged edition. However, Guo’s

translation manifests quite a few inconsistencies in how the names are translated and

presented. The translated names sometimes come with the original in parenthetical marks,

sometimes the original names appear in the endnotes with additional explanation, while

other times the original names are not given at all. It is as if the translated names were

provided merely to replace the foreign original, to occupy textual space. All this reflects the

early, developmental stage of translating Utopia – as well as of translating foreign texts into

Mandarin in general – before the twenty-first century.

1.5 LIU LIHUA’S UTOPIA (1978)332

Liu Lihua’s translation has long been out of print. It is not listed in any of the major library

catalogues in China, Hong Kong, or Taiwan. I was able to retrieve this edition only as late

as 2017. Its publisher, Sanxin Publishing, is no longer in business. The book cover is

More’s portrait; there is a title page prior to the table of contents, in which a pattern

resembling a printer’s flower is shown. Of all Mandarin versions, only Liu Lihua’s and Liu

Linsheng’s editions are printed with this kind of decorative frame. There is no mention of

the reference text, but based on the version of More’s invented names and the Utopian

paratexts included, it is evident that Paul Turner’s – who coined Anglophone equivalents

331 Hsia 107. 332 Liu Lihua 劉麗華, trans., Wu tuo bang 烏托邦 [Utopia] (Kaohsiung: Sanxin Publishing, 1978).

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such as Raphael Nonsenso to replace Raphael Hythloday – was the source.333 Turner’s

rendition is of a particular kind in that he aims at imbuing the text with a modern vibe: he

coined many of the names and toponyms appearing in Utopia based on linguistic roots and

meanings, with a combination of contemporary equivalents in English. In the introduction

to this Penguin Classics edition, Turner writes, “As modern education very seldom includes

Greek, I thought the only way of implementing More’s intention was to convert such

proper names into English equivalents. Accordingly, Hythlodaeus (who came from Portugal)

appears as Nonsenso, Anydrus as Nowater, and Ademus as Nopeople”.334 Thanks to this, Liu

Lihua’s edition brings a novel light to the re-translation of Utopia in view of Turner’s

unique modernisation of More’s coined names. Turner is not just translating the invented

names; he is actively participating in this cerebral jest, either to complicate or to simplify,

the interpretation could go both ways. Attempting to reach the same end, Liu Lihua has

created Mandarin equivalents, though not in every instance, such as River Nowater and

Raphael Nonsenso, to be discussed in the next section of this chapter. Hers is also the only

instance among all Mandarin Utopias that has successfully rendered and highlighted the

significance of Hythloday, or Nonsenso, in the translation just by translating the name.

Conforming to Turner’s text, Liu Lihua includes the epistles from More to Giles

and Giles to Busleyden. The endnotes are likewise directly taken from Turner’s edition; the

difference is that Lihua deletes eight notes from Book One and eighteen from Book Two.

A two-page afterword is appended after the endnotes, in which utopia’s etymology,

definitions, and Chinese counterparts such as Da Tong and Peach Blossom Spring are

alluded to. Utopia is defined in two aspects: first “to imagine an illusion that is impossible

in the real society” and second as “the romanticised documentation of an ideal nation”.335

The first line of observation reinforces the mythical and impractical features that are often

pejoratively linked to Utopia; however, by later on alluding to More’s narrative as

“romanticised documentation” Liu Lihua interpolates a sense of concreteness interlaced

yet again with a mythical flavour, that of the romanticised. Liu further specifies that Utopia

is rendered as Wu Tuo Bang, with proximity to both pronunciation and meaning, which

“indubitably has become a neologism in Mandarin Chinese”.336 Her observation, dated to

333 Paul Turner, trans., Utopia (London: Penguin Books, 1965, 2003). 334 Turner xii. 335 Liu 156. The original reads “想望在現實不可能有的社會的幻影” and “對理想的國家之浪

漫的紀錄”. 336 The original reads: 無疑地已成為國語的新語彙了。

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the 1970s, is the only translation where utopia is specifically referred to as becoming a

neologism in Mandarin.

1.6 SONG MEIHUA’S UTOPIA (2003)337

If we look at Utopia as a cultural product that has travelled, Song Meihua’s edition is closest

to the Morean heritage. This edition is up until now the most complete in terms of

authorial paratexts and is the most elegant translation with regard to its language. It was

born out of the first group of Western classics selected by the National Science Council of

Taiwan under the project of Translating and Annotating Classics (經典譯注計畫 ). This

project is based on a three-year cycle, still running today. The National Scientific Council

of Taiwan, which commissioned this translation, initiated this Project in 1999, and Utopia

was one of the first four classics to be (re)translated. Viewing translators as information

mediators, J. C. Sager argues that they “adjust their work more closely to the needs of

secondary readers, or indeed, where suitable, upgrade the end users to the class of primary

readers”.338 Song Meihua, in her way of translating and annotating, delivers the text to a

primary readership, supplementing them with the particulars necessary for capturing the

original context. This is not simply her personal decision, but done in compliance with the

objective of the translation series, where we see all other works included in the series are

presented with detailed annotations and original paratexts.

This 163-page translation marks itself out in two distinctive ways: its elegant as well

as idiomatically apt style that manifests the intricacies of the target language, and its

relatively complete paratextual materials that all other editions lack, further rendering

Song’s version both scholarly and artistic. It is scholarly because explanatory notes are

generously provided, along with the marginalia that are missing in all other Mandarin

translations.339 It is artistic because it is one of the very few instances where a relevant

illustration pertaining to Utopia is placed as the book cover, and the arrangement of

paratexts renders this volume a refined artistic product whose linguistic content has been

changed and yet which artistically aims at a faithful representation of its original.

337 Song Meihua 宋美璍, trans., Wu tuo bang烏托邦 [Utopia] (Taipei: Linking Books, 2003). 338 J. C. Sager “Text Types and Translation”, Text Typology and Translation, ed. Anna Trosborg. (Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 1997) 33. 339 However, Song missed out several marginal notes included in the original source.

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It is also the only Mandarin translation in which the other names of Utopia appear

– Eutopia and Udetopia. The word Eutopia, blissful place, appeared for the first time in the

commendatory verse allegedly written by More’s nephew Anemolius. Speakers with basic

knowledge of Greek and Latin would understand from the start that “utopia” puns in both

Greek and Latin, referring to a good place that is nowhere to be found. For Mandarin

speakers with no pre-existing knowledge of Latin or Greek, such a play on words is lost in

translation. With the inclusion of this commendatory poem that brings up Eutopia,

Mandarin-speaking readers are granted access to the double-layer implication of the word

as it was initially coined, rather than either remaining entirely unaware of it or only getting

a glimpse of it through explanatory notes. Among all the Mandarin Utopias, only Song’s

rendition includes this poem, in which eutopia is translated as “樂土” [le tu], literarily

“happy soil” or “happy land”. The phrase le tu first appeared in the poem “Big Rat” in The

Book of Poetry, a collective work by various anonymous authors from the eleventh to the

sixth centuries BC. “Big Rat” is taken as a trope for a despotic ruler from whom all citizens

were in dire need to run away. They were in search of the blissful land – 樂土 – where they

could settle and live happily ever after without duress or heavy taxation. Here Song adopts

the usage from The Book of Poetry to translate Eutopia, making it explicit that Utopia is the

good place to which people aspire.

1.7 WU LEI’S UTOPIA (2005)340

While Song’s edition is the richest in original paratexts, Wu Lei’s version is the one that

offers the most abundant non-original paratexts, with 191 illustrations as well as captions.

This number is given on the cover page, below the title, possibly for marketability. The

reference edition is not stated, but judging by some translational specificities341 as well as

the two texts appended after Utopia – a version of More’s biography and the epistle from

Erasmus to Ulrich von Hutten – it is evident that Dai Liuling’s 1982 edition serves as the

source.

340 Wu Lei 吳磊, trans., Wu tuo bang: Guanyu weilai wanmei shehui de quanbu shexian烏托邦: 關於未來

完美社會的全部設想 [Utopia: All the Visualisation About the Future Perfect Society] (Beijing:

People’s Daily Press, 2005). 341 For instance, how Peter Giles is referred to as “the perfect friend” in Dai’s 1982 edition instead of the 1956 one.

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Published by the People’s Daily Press in Beijing, it is the fanciest of all Mandarin

Utopias: it is the first volume among the series of 文化偉人代表作圖釋書系 [the

pictorial-annotated books of the cultural masters’ works], and it contains a plethora of, in

Genette’s term, iconic paratexts. It is also the only translation that inserts a non-authorial

subtitle on the cover page, 烏托邦: 關於未來完美社會的全部設想 [Utopia: All the

Visualisation About the Future Perfect Society], stressing the adjective “perfect”, which the

mainstream definition of utopia rejects. A short publication note is provided at the very

beginning, explaining the selection criteria for this book series. It aims at choosing those

great classical works that have shaped human knowledge, and its target readers are the

intelligentsia. The main objective behind this series is to re-translate those works with the

aim of making the translations more accurate and compressed, and to annotate focal

points via illustrations. In this way, the editorial team suggests, all those pioneering

thoughts can be easily decipherable and internalised into daily common sense. Yet after a

scan over this extravagantly pictorial volume, one has to ask what kind of reading

experience this edition produces and whether those added iconic paratexts indeed facilitate

a better reading, which will be further discussed in Chapter Four. Wu Lei’s translation stands out not just because of its elaborate visual presentation

with the plentiful non-authorial (and many times irrelevant) illustrations that are themselves

of high research value, but also because it is the only edition that offers a synopsis of the

two books and of each chapter. The summary is inserted immediately after the chapter title,

which is itself also supplemented with its pinyin spelling. It is unclear why the editor-

translator opts for such an arrangement because the additional pinyin spelling of the

chapter title does not add to the reading experience. Nor is pinyin spelling supplied

anywhere else in the volume other than the chapter titles. At best, it can be taken as a

layout arrangement to add layers to the presentation that barely generate individual value.

The explanatory notes are displayed in parenthetical marks, inside the main text but

in a different font. However, despite the variation in font to distinguish the author’s voice

from that of the translator, those remarks interrupt the reading flow. This plus the diverse

and often irrelevant illustrations render the reading experience a complex one. It situates

More’s Utopia in a larger historical and cultural context; yet those far-fetched associations

beg the question of how much has been appropriated, and what kind of end product the

translator-editor hoped to deliver with this pictorial volume.

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1.8 WANG JIN’S UTOPIA (2007)342

Wang Jin’s is the first bilingual edition of the Mandarin Utopia, published by Shaanxi

People’s Publishing House in 2007.343 Except for the fact that this edition includes the first

prefatory epistle from More to Giles and a three-page editor’s note supplied by Wang Jin, it

appears to be a rudimentary translation. It gives no clue as to which English translation is

printed in parallel to the target text. A close reading suggests that the English text was

taken from Bishop Gilbert Burnet’s translation and that Wang Jin modelled the edition on

Dai Liuling’s 1982 edition to a great extent. On the book cover, only the names of the

author and the translator-editor are mentioned. What is more, the word 英 enclosed in

brackets is placed in front of the name Thomas More, as an indication of the nationality

of Thomas More.344 For general readers without previous knowledge of Utopia, they would

have simply assumed that Utopia was written in English, and that the English text printed in

the volume was penned by the Englishman Thomas More. This, interestingly, matches the

anecdote that Paul Turner brings up in his translation for Penguin Classics: “Educated

people are often unaware that the book was written in Latin, and many imagine that they

have read the original, when what they have actually read is Raphael Robinson’s

translation.”345

The only prefatory item in this edition – an allographic one – is an editorial note,

entitled “Words from the Editor”. The first half of this note talks about how the rational

spirit originated from ancient Greece, and how with the development of rationalism the

West has had a fundamentally different value and frame of mind compared to the East,

which has had a stronger emphasis on the heart. It was time, this editor proposes, to open

the eyes to see the world via the translation of those Western classics, otherwise the

Chinese would still exclude themselves from the outside world, believing that they were

living in the Peach Blossom Spring. The editor’s critique, however, appears to be a

stereotyped and clichéd commentary, that might have been applicable at the turn of the

twentieth century when the concept of utopia was being introduced to China by foreign

missionaries or late Qing intellectuals. Providing such an outdated review in a modern

context, regrettably, confirms my conjecture about this book series, in particular this

342 Wang Jin 王金, trans., Wu tuo bang 烏托邦 [Utopia] (Xian: Shaanxi People’s Publishing House,

2007). 343 “Shaanxi” should in fact be spelt “Shanxi”, but I use the spelling that appears on the cover page. 344 英, pronounced ing, refers to England or English. 345 Turner 22. Quoted in McCutcheon, “Ten English Translations/Editions” 106.

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volume, being a hasty production. The second half of this note offers biographical

background on Thomas More, a summary of Utopia, and an evaluation of the literary

status and socio-political influence it has achieved. A phone call with the Shaanxi People’s

Publishing House indicated that Wang Jin was still a graduate student when she translated

Utopia, and her version was printed only once and the publishing house no longer has

stock. We may thus qualify this editorial note as a guide to reading Utopia; or to be precise,

Utopia through Wang Jin’s fairly simplistic rephrasing, which equates Utopia with the

pastoral Chinese counterpart, Peach Blossom Spring.

Even though Wang’s edition is a complete translation and includes the letter from

More to Giles, this version is much less sophisticated than the previous two abridged

editions (1935, 1957), especially in terms of language use. Detailed footnotes are a feature

of Gilbert Burnet’s English rendition, but none of them are reprinted in Wang’s bilingual

edition. In a few places Burnet also inserts parenthetical notes, and those are rendered

verbatim in Wang’s translation. There appears one exception in which Wang includes her

own parenthetical note inside the main text, distinguished by the phrase “translator’s

note”.346 This note is a brief introduction to Dionysius the Younger, who once studied

under Plato. Dionysius is alluded to in Utopia as an example to demonstrate the

philosopher’s failed attempt to turn a ruler into a philosopher king. There are more than a

few other historical figures mentioned in Utopia, but the fact that Dionysius is the only

exception where Wang offers her own note begs the question as to whether this passage

had a special resonance for her or if it is a mere reflection of inconsistency in translating a

foreign text.

This creates a more serious problem in accessing a text whose many invented

names are profound in each linguistic unit and require sensible decoding. Usually the

decoding in Mandarin translations takes place in explanatory notes, be they endnotes,

footnotes, or parenthetical remarks. Without the supplementary explication, this 2007

edition becomes an even flatter translation – both in content and in style – and the original

jest embedded in the narrative is lost in this linguistic transferral. Possibly the only feature

that would match the feature of the “Collector’s Edition” printed on the front cover is its

glitzy cover art, to be examined in Chapter Four. However, in all other aspects, including

346 Wang’s note reads: “(译者注: 代俄尼喜阿，公元前四世纪西西里岛的统治者，柏拉图曾

是他的哲学老师)”.

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content and material presentation, barely any of them live up to the claim of this volume

being a collector’s edition.

1.9 HU FENGFEI’S UTOPIA (2007 & 2012)347

Hu Fengfei’s translation is a surprise read. This volume was published in the series To Read

Masters’ Works in An Easy Way, 348 the objective of which is to popularise the Western

classics and to make reading them pleasant. What Hu does is not to add explanatory notes

to clarify the invented names, historical figures, customs, or toponyms. Instead, a

considerable amount of passages are inserted into the main text, connecting the dots,

submerging into the original narrative, and simultaneously creating another thread of

narrative parallel to More’s Utopia. Hu’s refined writing style makes the reading experience

like perusing an original novel. The sense of political didactics is erased as readers read

along the lines, as if travelling with Hythloday himself. For instance, at the beginning of

Book Two, a passage is added to guide readers into the original portrayal of the topography

of the Utopian island:

This is a brand-new world, a tranquil insular country. Everything about it – its river, towns, inhabitants, law, and customs – reveals harmony, wisdom, and civilisation, delivers a sense of awe and a heart-warming sense of emotion, and creates a yearning and longing in a person. I think I am blessed, for I have had the honour to witness this civilisation in my lifetime, and have engraved the marks of that beautiful kingdom deep down in the bottom of my heart. Please travel with me to that sacred land. Your life will then have a reason to be cherished and a goal to pursue after. And it all starts with Utopia…

The Utopian Island is like a leaf boat anchored silently in the boundless ocean. From afar, it appears like a mirage discharging an air of mystery in the ethereal realm […].349

347 Hu Fengfei 胡凤飞, trans., Wu tuo bang 烏托邦 [Utopia] (Beijing: Beijing Publishing Co., 2007,

2012). The major difference between these two editions is the book cover. The visual presentations vary, but both carry More’s portrait on the cover. Other than that, not much has been altered in the second edition, therefore I do not distinguish them as separate editions. 348 The series name is taken directly from the back cover. The original reads: 西方經典悅讀, which

can be rendered as The Pleasant Read of Western Classics. 349 Hu, trans., Utopia, 52. The original reads: 這是一個全新的世界，這是一個寧靜的島國，它

的河流、城鎮、居民、法律、風俗，它的一切，無不透露著和諧、睿智和文明，給人一

種震撼和感動，讓人懷著一份嚮往和憧憬。我想我是幸福的，因為在我的一生裡，我有

幸見證了這樣的文明，並在心裡深深地刻下了那個美麗國度的印記。請和我一起做這樣

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This passage further collapses the borderline between a real travelogue and a “mirage” to

be hoped after. Just when readers are promised that they will march together with the

narrator to a civilisation of harmony and wisdom – a real model to aspire to – they are

brought back to reality by words like mirage and mystery, subtly reminding them of its

fictional nature. The description of the Utopian island is also interlaced with Hu’s poetic

additions, making what would have sounded mathematical and topographical a pleasurable

read. This is only one of the many instances where Hu expands the original with his own

portrayal, and sometimes it is so strongly felt that Hu’s additions even outweigh More’s

words. Hu’s Utopia is therefore an amplified Utopia: layers of reading have been added to

the double narrative created by Hu’s voice, and More’s voice is sometimes subsumed in the

voice of the translator.

In other words, this amplified Utopia shall be considered to be an adaptation. In

addition to the common association with a transpositional practice in which a generic

mode is recast, Julie Sanders proposes the following definitional lines: it can be “parallel

editorial practice”; it often “offer[s] commentary on a source text”; it can also be an effort

to “make texts ‘relevant’ or easily comprehensible to new audiences and readerships via the

processes of proximation and updating”.350 Those additions have made Hu’s Utopia more

readily accessible and relevant to its Mandarin-speaking readers. However, unlike Liu

Chengshao’s 1957 abridged edition, which also contains a number of the translator’s words

in the main text, Hu’s rendition is different in the sense that not only does it contain a

plethora of additional long passages, the translation is rendered in a poetic manner,

interspersed with a high number of adjectives. I have commented on Liu Chengshao’s

edition being a co-authored work by Liu and More. In Hu’s case, not only will I call it a co-

authored literary piece, but I see Hu’s voice featuring even more prominently than that of

More himself. Hu Fengfei translates with the aim of getting Utopia across to readers in a

simpler and more pleasurable manner. The end product is a success in that it is rid of “the

accent of translation”, a construct propounded by the Taiwanese scholar-translator Lai

Tzu-yun,351 that is often detectable in translated works aiming to remain faithful to the

一段旅行，踏進那片神聖的土地。從此以後，你的生命裡就有了可以珍惜的理由，有了

可以追求的目標，而這一切，從烏托邦開始… 烏托邦島像一葉扁舟，靜靜地停泊在無邊

的海洋上。遠遠看去，就像一座海市蜃樓，虛無飄渺中透出神秘的氣息 […]。 350 Sanders 18-9. 351 I take this phrase from Lai Tzu-yun, who finds a distinguished “accent of translation” in the

early Mandarin translations. “Accent of translation” is a direct rendering of “翻譯腔”. This phrase

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source texts but that end up sounding awkward to the target readers. On the other hand,

Hu’s work is not to be gauged by its degree of fidelity to the original text, since an

adaptation entails a higher level of creativity during the process of rewriting. In fact, Linda

Hutcheon suggests that the success of an adaptation should be determined by the degree

of creativity that makes the adapted text “one’s own and thus autonomous.”352 In adding

those substantial passages, Hu Fenghei has indeed steered off from Utopia, and has

successfully entered and re-created his version of Wu Tuo Bang.

1.10 TANG YI’S UTOPIA (2011)353

Published in 2011, Tang Yi’s 236-page bilingual edition appeared in the series “Full

Translation Reading books ideal”, as printed on the book cover.354 The rear side of the

book cover contains a terse biography of Thomas More, but nothing about the translator,

reflecting the lack of recognition of the translator’s status in general in China. It is a

curious omission, especially when, in contemporary translated texts, the common practice

is to include both a biographical sketch as well as a list of publications from both the

author and the translator. The “disappearance” of the translator is further manifest in the

one-page reading guide, in which Tang Yi signs off as “the translator”, dated June 2011,

without stating his name. For a fairly modern translation, this signing off as “the

translator” is almost bizarre and intriguing, as if it was an anonymous translation or was

under a pseudonym. If we understand how a translator’s spirit is exercised in his or her

work of art as a process of self-fashioning, the absence of Tang Yi’s name is self-

cancellation, intentional or otherwise.

is brought up in many of Lai’s articles researching Chinese translations of English and Japanese

works. For instance, see Lai’s “Paoxiao shanzhuang zai Taiwan: fanyi, gaixie yu fangzuo” 咆哮山莊在

臺灣 : 翻譯、改寫與仿作 [Wuthering Heights in Taiwan: Translations, Adaptations and other

Derivative Works], Compilation and Translation Review 6.2 (2013): 1-39. Similarly, Peter Newmark calls the grammatical awkwardness of a translated text as “translationese”. See Newmark, A Textbook of Translation (Hemel Hempstead: Prentice-Hall International, 1987) 13. 352 Hutcheon 20. 353 Tang Yi 唐译, trans., Wu tuo bang 乌托邦 [Utopia] (Changchun: Jinlin Publishing Co., 2011). 354 Despite its grammatical awkwardness and error, I adopt the original series name as it appears on the book cover. The lower case of the last two words is also from the original, not a typo, therefore suggesting either a lack of a proficient level of English on the side of the publishing house or

negligence in the proofreading process. The original series name is “理想藏書 * 英漢讀本”, which

can be rendered as “Ideal Book Collection, English-Mandarin Bilingual Texts”.

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Tang’s is a fairly bare-bones edition, in that the only paratextual item included is a

one-page reading guide, a sixteen-line passage to be precise, divided by a brief biographical

sketch and a summary. The translation itself also reveals a level of immaturity consistent

with the terse preface. Errors are to be found, and some lines read awkwardly as if written

in a haste or even taken from Google Translate. Such an “accent of translation” manifests

itself in the core text, resulting sometimes in an interruption of the reading flow, at other

times twisting the original meaning to an unwanted or illogical outcome that may or may

not be detected by readers. For the latter, when Hythloday recounts the punishment for

adultery, the English text reads: “He that attempts a married woman to adultery is no less

severely punished than he that commits it” (169). Tang renders this as “其罪行並不輕於

他對其進行強姦”, the translation of which is “this crime is no less severe than him raping

[the married woman]”. The term “rape” is not metaphorical here. How Tang interprets

committing adultery as raping the adulteress is beyond reason. It is a bilingual version,

where the English and Mandarin texts run parallel to each other on the printed page. How

many readers cross-reference the English text is not to be known; for those who read only

the Mandarin translation, this line may appear disconcerting. That readers might raise

questions or simply categorise this line as aberrant, like, for instance, the Utopian custom

of examining the naked bodies with a third party present before marriage, is not unlikely.

What can be confirmed is that from both paratextual and translational aspects, Tang Yi’s

edition is a disappointing product, despite the fact that it is the third most recent version,

and thus ought to have demonstrated much more maturity than the earlier translations.

1.11 SUN PINGHUA AND HE SHAN’S UTOPIA (2013)355

The third and most recent bilingual edition was published in 2013, in the series Great Ideas

from Penguin. This Penguin bilingual edition is a mere translation of Books One and Two,

along with two prefatory epistles preceding the main text. The editorial board does explain

their choice of excluding all other paratexts, which is to reconstruct the original condition

in which the text was produced and for readers to experience the text with their own

355 Sun, Pinghua, and He Shan孙平华 & 何珊, trans., Wu tuo bang [Utopia] (Beijing: Penguin Books,

2013).

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rational thinking, without other points of reference. The aim is to highlight the authorial

intention, which is also the major theme of this series.

The English text, instead of the new Penguin Classics version by Dominic Baker-

Smith published in 2012, is the previous translation by Paul Turner. The chances are that

by the time Sun Pinghua and He Shan started their translation, Baker-Smith’s edition had

not seen the light of publication. However, using Turner’s translation as the reference

produces yet another mystery to be solved. Turner provides a glossary to help readers

decipher his English equivalents of More’s coinages. However, in this bilingual edition

published in 2013, the glossary is not provided, nor are any explanatory notes available. It

creates a major drawback because the nomenclatural fun escalated by Turner’s translation

loses its effectiveness in Mandarin and generates further confusion in view of the

undecodable significations that are often rendered with only proximity to pronunciation.

Four prefatory items are included in this book, all of which are non-authorial. The

first is an article in lieu of a preface. This very first prefatory item is a publication note

elucidating why it is of urgent relevance to re-translate those classical works, along with

their selection criteria. The second and third prefatory items are in fact the same; the

former is the translation of the latter entitled “Introduction to the Chinese Editions of

Great Ideas”. The purpose of this series, Great Ideas from Penguin, as stated in this

introduction, is concerned with authorial intentions. The publisher Simon Winder states

that the goal of the series is

to recreate a more intimate feeling – to recreate the atmosphere in which, for example, Thomas Paine’s Common Sense or John Ruskin’s On Art and Life was first published – where the reader has no other guide than the original author and his or her own common sense. […] the original intention of the author becomes once more important.356

The raison d’être of this series of Great Ideas is thus made apparent, as when dealing with a

translated text it is inevitable to consider whether to opt to stay faithful to the source text

or to cater to domestic intelligibility and thus sometimes sacrifice loyalty to authorial

meaning.

Since this series is aimed at re-exploring “the original intention of the author”, it is

understandable that this rendition does not have the “interference”, or the editorial

intervention, of glossary and endnotes, as Paul Turner’s English edition does. However, the

356 Sun & He 5-6.

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choice to use Turner’s English translation and the inclusion of a guide to reading Utopia

written by the Chinese translators make the objective of Great Ideas from Penguin

inconsistent. For one thing, Turner’s rendition is a rather modern one, which has at a

certain level created some deviance from the original Latin text, or from the earliest

English translation by Robinson. That is why a glossary and translational endnotes are

included in Turner’s English edition for Penguin Classics. Without the glossary and

endnotes, readers of this rendition have to spend extra effort to decipher those newly

coined terms by Turner, such as “Nonsenso” and “Aircastle”, 357 or “Blindland” and

“Cloudian”, referring to the people Alaopolitae and Nephelogetae.358 The fact that Sun and He

transliterate Turner’s renditions of names without further explanation pushes readers away

from the authorial intention, where the names were meant as comic puns, and further

reinforces the foreignness, which is not up for dissection. Secondly, even though it is made

explicit in the introduction that its aim is to recreate a direct dialogue with the author, there

is a reading guide (written by the two translators) which offers a short biography of More,

summarises the content, and even puts forward a critique as to how Utopian society is an

archetype of socialism in every single aspect. They further add that Marx and Engels

praised Utopia, believing that it sheds light on communism, which may have in one way or

another encouraged readers to approach this book from a communist perspective. This

pre-structuring of how readers access the book is the exact opposite of what this book

series is intended to provide, namely, “to recreate a more intimate feeling […] where the

reader has no other guide than the original author and his or her own common sense”.

Such a conflicting arrangement invites doubts as to whether this version of Utopia was

translated independently of the objective of this Penguin book series.

1.12 LI LINGYAN’S UTOPIA (2016)

The most recent publication was Li Lingyan’s 2016 edition, by the University of Northwest

Press in China. Despite its seemingly celebratory intent, coinciding with Utopia’s

357 “Nonsenso”, as previously mentioned, is what Turner names Raphael Hythloday, the one who speaks nonsense. “Aircastle”, on the other hand, is the name Turner uses to refer to Amaurote, the capital city of Utopia. It is relatively easier to associate Aircastle, from castle in the air, with a city that exists only idealistically; yet it loses the original meaning of “dim, faint, or shadowy” from the word Amaurote. 358 “Alaopolitae” is from alaos (blind) and polites (citizen), whereas “Nephelogetae” is from the nephele, meaning cloud. See Turner 118.

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quincentenary, it is a rather rudimentary rendition, primarily because it does not reproduce

any of the original paratexts with which Utopia was initially published, nor does it provide

an explanatory frame for the service of target readers. None of the paratexts printed in the

early Latin editions are included. The preface penned by Li is the most that this edition

offers in terms of an explicatory base. As we will see in Chapter Five, it is the only case

where none of the Utopian prefigurations are mentioned at all, nor is the etymological root

of Utopia sufficiently delineated. In fact, only the ou- segment, hence the pejorative

connotation of a sense of disillusion, is highlighted.

Li’s translation commences with a five-page preface, followed by the table of

contents, and then Utopia proper. Thirty-one footnotes359 are included in Book One, most

of which are explanations of toponyms and historical figures, as well as five notes

indicating sources cited from the Bible. There are, however, only three footnotes in Book

Two. The first footnote is to specify who Theophrastus was,360 and the second note is to

elucidate that the ducat was a common currency in the Middle Ages.361 The third and last

footnote in Book Two is the only explanatory note in Li’s edition that touches upon More’s

invented names as well as the only case where the original neologism is provided:

Cynemerne and Trapemerne, meaning the starting day and the last day of the month,

respectively. No footnotes about important characters like Peter Giles and Raphael

Hythloday are provided, despite the fact that notes on historical figures such as Seneca and

Amerigo Vespucci are laid out in detail. This contrast suggests a level of inconsistency in

the organisation of the footnotes, further evincing a partial grasp of Utopia on the part of

the translator.

Unlike most of the other translators, who had a background in the humanities, Li is

an adjunct professor at the School of Economics and Management in Northwest

University, China. She holds a bachelor’s degree in chemical engineering and mechanics,

with master’s and doctoral degrees in economics. Her faculty webpage indicates that her

current research direction is business management and theories of international investment,

none of which suggests an easy association with Utopia.362 However, a co-authored article

(2015) in the Journal of the Party School of CPC Hangzhou, in which she investigates how New

359 The format of the footnotes in this version is similar to Dai’s 1982 edition. 360 Only a terse line stating “Greek philosopher, c.372 BC-287 BC” is provided in the footnote, without supplying the original spelling of the name. See Li 66. 361 Li 83. 362 Her publication list on the faculty website only goes up to 2006, all of which are management-related. See <http://ems.nwu.edu.cn/shizituandui/htm/lilingyan.html> 14 August 2017.

http://ems.nwu.edu.cn/shizituandui/htm/lilingyan.html

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Marxism monopolises capitalist theories, may have revealed a trace of ideological

preference, especially given that the publication platform belongs to the Communist Party

of China. The journal advocates Marxism, Mao Zedong’s thought, Deng Xiaoping’s theory,

and “the Hundred Flowers Movement”363 to be its founding principles; specifically, it aims

to be the platform for expressing ideology, and for decision making in regards to the

teaching of the Party School.364 Li’s contribution to and association with a media platform

tightly linked with the Communist Party justifies her attempt to re-translate More’s Utopia

and that its end result is, unfortunately, an elementary product born out of the translator’s

non-professional training in translation.

The back cover of this volume indicates that it belongs to a translational series of

political classics (政治學經典譯叢) by the Northwest University Press, which also includes

Aristotle’s Politics, Rousseau’s The Social Contract, Machiavelli’s The Prince, Hobbes’s Leviathan,

and Montesquieu’s The Spirit of the Laws. In the press release about Li’s translation, the

Press states that in recent years it has adjusted the focus of publication to introducing

contemporary Western classics, including those on the subject of politics. Utopia is not a

contemporary work; it is nonetheless listed under the category of political science classics.

This generic arrangement creates a factual paratext, the implicit context predisposing readers

with a veil of political preconception to examine the book with a didactic eye. Li’s edition is

also a bare-bones effort, like Robinson’s, except for her preface and footnotes. A five-page

preface by Li Lingyan is the only paratext in this most recent edition. Like the most

common functions that a preface serves in modern publications, it offers a brief biography

of Thomas More, a summary of Utopia, a few historical features to help understand the

milieu in which Utopia was composed, and Li’s own views on Utopia. Li brings up the full

title of the book, and emphasises the ou- feature of the title, by remarking that “Utopia”

has become the synonym of “empty thought”, as well as how subsequent intellectuals have

adopted it to portray an imagined ideal place set in future.365 She excludes all prefatory

363 The Hundred Flowers Movement took place in 1956 when the then Communist Party Chairman Mao Zedong encouraged the expression of opinions toward the communist regime in order to “promote the flourishing of the arts and the progress of science”. The name of the movement comes from its slogan: “Let a hundred flowers bloom and a hundred schools of thought contend.” See Oxford Dictionaries <https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/hundred_flowers> 23 June 2018. In the course of a year, this movement was wiped out as the Anti-Rightist Campaign surfaced. The slogan was raised again years later, but freedom of speech has never been a reality under the Communist Party of China. 364 For the introduction of this Journal, see its official website: <http://manu24.magtech.com.cn/hzdx/CN/column/column291.shtml> 17 June 2018. 365 Li 1.

https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/hundred_flowers

http://manu24.magtech.com.cn/hzdx/CN/column/column291.shtml

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epistles and verses that are part of the whole rhetorical apparatus that shapes Utopia as it

has been throughout the centuries. Whether this was a deliberate editorial decision or a lack

of analytical understanding of Utopia remains unclear. However, the final product is

appropriate to a reading of Utopia as a straightforward political treatise, and to the inclusion

of the book in a series of translations of political classics.

2 DECODING MORE’S NOMENCLATURE: LOST IN TRANSLITERATION

More’s network of Greek puns does not simply entertain; they organize. Hythloday is a distributor of nonsense and almost everything he describes from his travels has a name coined from Greek words connoting ‘nonsense’ or ‘non-existence’ (a quality which renders things nonsensical).366

In a general sense, translation is an act of rewriting from one language to another. The

narrative is presented in a different linguistic form, but ideally the meanings remain similar,

or are largely unaltered, in order to be faithful to the original. However, this is not the case

with More’s Utopia. More’s original text is so deliberately elusive that it may be taken as a

series of codes exhibited in the form of names, sentences, rhetorical strategies, and literary

devices, so that, fundamentally, this literary work is like a labyrinth waiting to be explored.

There may not be a pre-designated or any easy route to reach the exit, just like the many

different interpretations of Utopia not necessarily arriving at the same findings in regards to

the text.

All the seriousness is disguised in a subtle jest manifested in various rhetorical

strategies and naming constructions. The brilliance of each invented name is disguised in

the conflation of Latin, Greek, and sometimes Hebrew or Persian roots. Even the surname

of the author, whose etymological root indicates fool, has effectively generated a sense of

playfulness and ambiguity for readers who are familiar with the Greek language. That the

alleged eye-witness account of Utopia is recounted by a person whose surname means

“expert in nonsense”, and documented by a historical figure surnamed Morus – folly –

provides the informed readership with a brilliant introduction to the ironic structure of this

utopian narrative.

366 Eric Nelson, “Greek Nonsense in More’s Utopia”, Historical Journal 44.4 (2001): 890.

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This section investigating More’s nomenclatural games begins with the narrator-

traveller Raphael Hythloday, the Princeps Utopus, moves on to the official names, and then

ends with the ethnological names More coined. I examine the translational variants from

their construction, which involves the naming strategies. The meaning of certain words is

lost and renewed through the translations from Latin to English and Mandarin. In the

process of translation, the translators act as readers and mediators, interpreting the

meanings of the original text along with their subjective experience, aiming at transfusing

their domestic elements and evaluations into the foreign text. A re-evaluation of these

translational variants challenges the notion of (un)translatability, uncovers the meanings

lost and gained through translation, and reaffirms that translated texts are products of

cultural meanings.

A simple generalisation offered by Dominic Baker-Smith is that the naming

strategy is encapsulated in the Greek compound ou-/eu-topos.367 This overall pattern does

highlight the paradoxical complications prevalent throughout Utopia, especially in invented

names and in opposing voices. Yet More’s sophisticated nomenclature schemes can barely

be summarised in this single statement. Quoting Sir James Mackintosh, Joseph Levine once

again reminds readers that “[a]ll the names which [More] invented for men and places were

intimations of their being unreal”, and that this viewpoint has remained standard. 368

However, these two distinguished utopian scholars’ views on More’s nomenclatural

schemes are challenged, and indeed overthrown, by James Romm’s 1991 article examining

the naming strategies in Utopia. Romm uses the early modern Dutch philologist Gerhard

Vossius (1577-1649) as a case in point to demonstrate how the attempts at schematising

More’s nomenclature have failed, but how this has not discouraged subsequent critics from

making continuous efforts at schematisation. Drawing on most scholars’ views, Romm

offers a rough pattern that divides the ethnologic names into two types: firstly, those like

the Utopians that “ironically negate the peoples they describe”; secondly, those like

Macarians that “identify some prominent moral or ethical quality”.369 Yet what complicates

and makes this schematisation unsuccessful is that there are other invented names that fit

neither, or both, of the two types.

367 Baker-Smith (2014) 494-95. 368 Levine 81. 369 Romm 174. The etymological root of Macarians comes from makarios, meaning blessed and happy. See Cambridge Utopia (1995) 95n74.

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Decoding the original names was already a demanding task; transferring it into a

language distinctively different from the Latin family group further obfuscates the results.

The look at the first introduction of the term “utopia” into Mandarin provided previously

offers a brief overview of how the understanding has evolved and how this beautifully

crafted translation embodies in itself proximity to both sound and meaning. This is one of

the rare cases in which both ends – sound and meaning – are met. In translating More’s

nomenclature constructions into Mandarin, exceptions exist, but transliteration has been

the most commonly adopted strategy. To examine the noun construction, this section

divides More’s nomenclature in Utopia into four groups – Raphael Hythloday, Princeps

Utopus, official titles, and ethnological names – in order to address on what levels

translations are happening and how effectively they have transmitted the original.

2.1 RAPHAEL HYTHLODAY370

It appears that most names related to Utopia are paradoxical, as is Utopia itself. Some basic

knowledge of Greek and Latin is required to decipher the message, however disguised or

otherwise. In fact, when commenting on More’s philological and semiological

inquisitiveness, James Romm argues that Greek and Latin served for More as “a kind of

code, the meanings of which could be extracted only imperfectly or not at all”.371 The

name of the narrator, Raphael Hythloday, is a prime example.372 His first name stems from

the Archangel Raphael, who is also seen as the messenger of God (in the apocryphal Book

of Tobit) who serves as a guide leading Tobias on a journey.373 The name Hythloday, like

many other names in Utopia, is etymologically double-encoded. It is formed from a

combination of the Greek hythlos and daios, and is most commonly translated as “expert in

trifles” or “well-learnt in nonsense” (11).374 Elizabeth McCutcheon postulates that “[t]hen

370 While both the Latin Hythlodaeus and the anglicised Hythloday are equally commonly adopted in translations and review articles, I use Hythloday to refer to the traveller-narrator. However, whenever a quotation is used, the original form as it appears will be adopted. 371 Romm 173. 372 Acknowledging how this name establishes a pattern that runs the narrative, Romm nevertheless deliberately left it out of his analysis. See Romm 183. Baker-Smith notes the tendency for abbreviating the surname to Hythloday in English editions. See Baker-Smith (2014) 495. 373 Turner xii. See also Cambridge Utopia (1995) 31. 374 Another similar definition offered by the Cambridge Utopia is that the name Hythloday means “distributor or peddler of nonsense” in Greek. However, Richard Halpern asserts that hythlos does not suggest vain chatter but rather “non-philosophical speech […] speech aimed at pleasure rather

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there is the name of the narrator: is this world traveler the healer of God, the opener of

eyes, his first name suggests, or the peddler of nonsense his family name speaks of, or both,

so that we must both believe and disbelieve in him and his narration?”375 That is, although

the linguistic root can be traced, the result often frustrates readers, who are left incredibly

confused about what More intended to convey. It should be borne in mind that the utopian

polity depicted in the Second Book is Hythloday’s “eyewitness account”, and if the person

who recounts his utopian experience has a name insinuating that the narrator himself is an

expert in nonsense or skilled at pleasant speech, how much can readers take his words as a

genuine account? In his Principle of Hope, Ernst Bloch writes that “[r]eal ciphers are not

static; they are figures of tension, they are tendentious process forms and, above all, in fact,

on this path, symbolic ones”.376 Such symbolism is embedded in each cipher and word,

which then become even more mutated, or complicated, and lost many times, in the

Mandarin Utopias. The most common translational practice of rendering a foreign name

into Mandarin is to use transliteration, which is often accompanied by a footnote or

endnote elucidating its original name and meanings. In the case of Raphael Hythloday, the

rule of transliteration applies almost consistently among all the Mandarin translations.

Editions Appearance in the

Mandarin text

Romanisation and/or

translation

Explanatory notes if

applicable

Liu, 1935 拉斐爾(Raphael

Hithloday，此係理想

的⼈)

La Fei Er (Raphael

Hithloday, this means an

ideal person)

(explanatory note

displayed in

parenthetical remark in

the main text)

Dai, 1956 这位拉斐尔—这是他

的名字，他姓希斯拉

This La Fei Er – This is his

(given) name, his surname is

The endnote specifies

Hythloday’s Greek

than knowledge”. Conversely, diaos does not mean scholarly knowledge but “‘experienced,’ ‘cunning’, ‘skilled’ as an artisan might be skilled at his craft”. So Halpern offers an alternative translation, “skilled in pleasant speech”, which fundamentally removes the sense of contradiction or oxymoron. See Richard Halpern, The Poetics of Primitive Accumulation: English Renaissance Culture and the Genealogy of Capital (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1991) 142. 375 Elizabeth McCutcheon, “The Language of Utopian Negation: Book II of More’s Utopia, 1985”, Moreana Special Issue 51.201-02 (2015): 42. Heiserman reads the name as “a satiric mixture of jest

and earnest – Mr. Healer-from-God Talker-of-nonsense”. See Heiserman 166. 376 Bloch 165.

119

德 Xi Si La De roots (“üthlos” and

“daiein”, the first part

of which appears in

Plato’s Republic), stating

that More adopts this

name to stress an

unwarranted person. It

also points out that the

authorial More speaks

via Hythloday and

disguises himself as

someone countering

Hythloday in order to

avoid censorship.

Liu, 1957 拉裴爾(Raphael

Hithloday)，(指理想

的⼈)

La Pei Er (explanatory note

displayed in

parenthetical remark in

the main text)

Guo, 1966 拉斐爾 La Fei Er N/A

Liu, 1978 拉斐爾・無稽 La Fei Er・Wu Ji 原意為無稽之談 [the

original meaning is the

talk of nonsense]

Dai, 1982 这位拉斐尔—这是他


德


(given) name, his surname

is Xi Si La De.

The footnote here

does not offer

etymological

explication; rather it

specifies that names in

Utopia are mostly

coined by More, an

“empty talker”.

Dai, 1997 這位拉斐爾—這是他



(given) name, his surname

N/A

120

德 is Xi Si La De.

Song, 2003 名叫拉斐爾，姓希適

婁岱

Named La Fei Er,

surnamed Xi Shi Lou Dai

N/A

Wu, 2005 拉斐爾・西斯拉德 La Fei Er・Xi Si La De N/A

Wang,

2007

姓希斯拉德，名叫拉

斐爾

Surnamed Xi Si La De,

named La Fei Er

N/A

Hu, 2007

& 2012

拉斐爾・希斯拉德 La Fei Er・Xi Si La De N/A

Tang, 2011

這位拉斐爾—他的家

族傳下來的姓⽒為希

斯拉德

This Le Fei Er – whose

surname passed down by his

family is called Xi Si La De

N/A

Sun & He,

2013

拉斐爾・諾森索 La Fei Er・Nuo Sen Suo

N/A

Lee, 2016 他姓海思洛德名拉斐

爾

His surname is Hai Si Luo

De, name is La Fei Er

N/A

This table summarises how Raphael Hythloday has been translated into Mandarin, namely

via transliteration. “Raphael” is a common Christian name – just like Thomas or Peter –

which already has a prevalent rendering, that is, 拉斐爾 [La Fei Er]. There is a very minor

nuance in the second character (斐; 裴), with differences in intonation and radical. This

variation is rather incidental and hence has no individual study value.

However, a few points are worth mentioning here. To begin with, Liu Linsheng

(1935), Liu Chengshao (1957), and Guo Xiangzhang (1966) all translate only the given

name Raphael, without offering his surname. 377 Despite the very minor formatting

variation, the parenthetical notes in the two Lius editions indicate that Chengshao’s was

377 A small nuance in Liu’s two editions is that the radicals – as well as the pronunciation – of the second character are different, even though both were rendered with the aim of close proximity to the original sound.

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modelled on Linsheng’s translation – for this name at least – because of the typo in the

spelling of Hythloday and of the definition of Raphael. To be specific, the parenthetical

notes in both editions write “Raphael Hithloday” and define Raphael as the “ideal person”.

An ideal person comes nowhere close to a peddler of nonsense. It can be inferred that Liu

Linsheng generalises the narrator who talks about the ideal polity to be an ideal person

himself. Secondly, in Liu Linsheng’s and Guo Xiangzhang’s versions, the name Raphael is

underlined, the proper name mark of the Mandarin writing system. In modern days, this

proper name mark is rarely used, apart from in official writings. Yet it was not uncommon

to see the proper name mark in texts of earlier days, especially in vertically typeset texts, to

which the three discussed editions belong. Thirdly, the 2013 Penguin edition uses

transliteration as well; however, instead of transliterating Hythloday, its source text is Paul

Turner’s rendition: “Raphael Nonsenso”. Turner exquisitely exemplifies the objective the

Yale editors had in mind when translating More’s invented proper nouns, that “the names

will strike modern Anglophone reader ‘as the names in Latin do the Latin reader’”.378 The

Yale Utopia is unquestionably one of the cardinal reference editions in English, but in my

view, if we were to disregard More’s contemporaneous readers’s initial experience of

reading Utopia, no other translations to date have surpassed Turner’s brilliancy and success

in rendering the same effect as the Latin readers received. Regrettably, Sun & He’s Penguin

bilingual edition spoils the fun by failing to provide any explanatory notes to the

transliterated names. Thus, Nonsenso becomes “Nuo Sen Suo”. This omission makes the

rendered surname not just less acute, but pointless, because Nonsenso is rendered with

proximity to its English pronunciation. It could also be printed as “Sen Suo Nuo” or “Suo

Sen Nuo”. The order of these three characters can be reversed, switched, or even replaced

with other characters; it would not have mattered because readers would not have

understood that this foreign surname in fact had a profound implication embedded in its

construction. The point of satirising the narrator’s credibility comes adrift when the

anglicised name Nonsenso is reproduced in a set of characters that attempt to imitate its

pronunciation, at the expense of the referential significance. The proximity to

pronunciation in this case fails to match the translational beauty, loses its denotative clarity,

and is devoid of referential significance, let alone the fact that 諾森索 is not a literal

translation, whose characters do not reveal anything resembling nonsense.

378 Quoted in Baker-Smith (2014) 495.

122

The Penguin bilingual edition was published in 2013; the other translation modelled

on Paul Turner’s was published in 1978 and, in the case of Raphael Hythloday, reproduced

a name closer to what More would have intended. “拉斐爾・無稽” reads as “La Fei Er ・

Wu Ji”, literally “Raphael Nonsense”. The translated surname “Wu Ji” stems from the

idiom 無稽之談, signifying a talker of nonsense. Liu Lihua, translator of the 1978 edition,

specifies in an endnote that she adopts the sense-for-sense translation of the surname to be

無稽, nonsense (141). Among all other editions that transliterate Hythloday, some without

explanatory notes, Liu Lihua’s version is as yet unparalleled. It is unfortunate that her

edition has not managed to survive long in the market.

Another intricacy revealed by the display of this name is analysed by Gerard

Wegemer, who looks into the manner in which Raphael Hythloday is introduced by Peter

Giles. He compares the Latin original, Robinson’s, and Surtz’s with his own version, which

aims at rendering the original as literally as possible: “Now this Raphael, for such is he

called, with the family name being Hythlodaeus […].”379 Wegemer questions the grounds

on which a distinction is made “between what Raphael is called and what he is known to be”

and understands this formulation to be a hint at Hythloday’s identity: if he is “a self-

proclaimed healer of God (‘Raphael’) or [if] he actually belong[s] to the family of those

well-learned in nonsense (‘Hythlo-daeus’)”.380 Starting from the turn of the twenty-first

century, all seven recent editions translate the full name, unlike the aforementioned three

that simply offer the given name Raphael. Some render it as “surnamed Hythlodaeus,

named Raphael” or the other way around (Song, 2003; Wang, 2007; Lee, 2016), while some

adopt the common presentation of the Anglophone names that separate the surname and

given name with a period (Liu, 1978; Wu, 2005; Hu, 2007 & 2012; Sun & He, 2013). Dai

Liuling’s three editions all render this line of introduction as “This is Raphael – it is his

(given) name, his family name is Hythloday”. The difference lies in the notes: in the 1956

edition Dai includes etymological roots (whereas his subsequent editions do not),

specifying that the first segment of the etymology üthlos also appears in Plato’s Republic.

He further specifies that More uses this name to signify an unwarranted person – 莫須

有. In Dai’s second edition, 莫須有 is removed; in place of it is 空談的見聞家 (“an

empty talker”) as well as an emphasis on the fact that most of the names in Utopia

were coined by More. Dai’s rendition, to a lighter degree, distinguishes the surname

379 Wegemer 296. 380 Wegemer 296.

123

and given name of the traveller-narrator via the explanatory notes. The only one that

appears to have transmitted the subtlety of Giles’s manner of introduction is Tang’s 2011

edition, which reads “this Raphael – whose surname passed down by his family is called

Hythloday”. While readers might find the mention of “a surname being passed down by

his family” repetitive, they are encouraged to question this redundancy.

2.2 PRINCEPS UTOPUS

It is no accident that Hythlodaeus does not give us the name of a single Utopian except, of course, Utopus himself.381

What does a name tell us? Silencing the names speaks volumes. It is an act of self-

cancellation, as Greenblatt would call it. It diminishes individuality, a trait that is not

encouraged in the Utopian commonwealth. If Utopus is the only name spelt out, the

significance of this name is multiplied. Having discussed how the term “utopia” is

rendered, it is necessary to examine its namesake Utopus as well as his position – that is,

how “Princeps Utopus” is translated and understood in Mandarin translations. As

suggested in the section on publication history, the very first English edition published in

1551 was a bare-bones effort. The syntax, style, and word choice that Ralph Robinson

adopted were colloquial, and he made mistakes, many of which were deliberate. The word

Princeps serves as a curious case in point. Princeps was the Latin word adopted by More to

refer to the conqueror of the island and its law-maker, Utopus. Princeps denotes a principal

or main officer; it was also the title of the first Roman emperor, Princeps Augustus.382 A

common view that is widely accepted in the Utopian Studies community about this

misinterpretation of Robinson’s presumes that More had no intention of referring to a

king or kingship, as pinpointed in the first part of the book title—“On the Best State of a

Commonwealth.” While both hereditary and elective monarchies existed in early modern

Europe, More’s Utopia is a Commonwealth, whose “head of state is not a hereditary

381 Greenblatt 44. 382 See <https://www.britannica.com/topic/princeps> 06 June 2019. Born Gaius Octavius, Augustus’s military conquests had made him the first Roman emperor, thus establishing monarchy in the Roman Empire. See also <https://www.britannica.com/topic/monarchy> 10 October 2019.

https://www.britannica.com/topic/princeps

https://www.britannica.com/topic/monarchy

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monarch” and whose community is “founded on law for the common [good]”.383 This is

evident in how the Utopians elect their state officers, Syphogrants and Tranibors (or

Phylarchs and Protophylarchs in the modern tongue). By translating Princeps as King,

Robinson fundamentally converted a state into a monarchy.384

Even though Princeps is not part of the nomenclature game that More devised, the

fact that it is associated with Utopus makes it necessary to consider the two together. Even

more so, using this word in a text that invites multi-layered readings opens up possibilities

other than a simple misinterpretation. While recognising the possibility of the conversion

of Utopia’s political system by the word “king”, McCutcheon argues that Robinson’s

appropriation was also likely due to a convenient perspective, reflecting “general

Elizabethan usage as well as the more specific political structure in Great Britain and other

western countries at that time”.385 This, in Lawrence Venuti’s words, would be to inscribe

the text with domestic intelligibility. This phenomenon is rather common in Mandarin

translations; for instance, in the passage where the reportorial More was asked to be in

service of the “king”, the earlier three Mandarin editions (1935, 1957, 1966) render it as 諸

侯 [zhu hou], the title of the feudal princes of the Zhou Dynasty and the Warring Times

(c.1046 BC-c.221 BC). The principalities, or states, were “gifted” by the Emperor to his

relatives or ministers as a reward. The feudal system operated differently in each dynasty,

but the general rule was that within each principality, 諸侯 – or the feudal prince – held a

certain level of autonomy but was to abide by the Emperor’s order and law. Undeniably by

translating Princeps with the title of 諸侯, a sense of domestic intelligibility is generated.

Nevertheless, such a translation is erroneous because it presupposes that power is

delegated by the supreme authority, the emperor. Furthermore, an inevitable and

unwarranted association with the ancient feudal system is made at the same time. Less keen

readers may have simply taken it as the title of the leader; for critical readers, such a

connection with the feudal system in a narrative where citizens are allowed to vote may well

create unnecessary confusion, hence More’s ideal commonwealth presented in these three

editions has become a mixture of different political systems.

383 See <https://www.britannica.com/topic/Commonwealth-association-of-states> 10 October 2019. 384 Richard Marius, who contributed to More’s biography, believes that Robinson transforms a “solidly republican Utopian commonwealth” into a monarchy (xi). Quoted in McCutcheon (1992) 106. 385 McCutcheon (1992) 106.

https://www.britannica.com/topic/Commonwealth-association-of-states

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When commenting how, with Robinson’s translation, Utopia was transformed from

a book aimed at a particular learned audience to one aimed at a mixed readership of the

rich and the middling sort, David Harris Sacks puts forward a perceptive argument:

It was now a work more of social amelioration than of philosophical inquiry and political satire. It is perhaps for this reason that Robynson persists in treating Utopus, the conqueror of Utopia and the maker of its laws, as a king. If Utopia was to be a truly practical book leading toward the elimination of present-day social evils and toward the improvement of conditions for the poor, it was not possible to rely solely on bringing the hearts and minds of the people to clear insight. Any specific reform would require the concerted action of the political classes under the initiative and with the approval of the prince.386

Indeed, whether it was a reflection of the Elizabethan political structure, a critical response

to More’s term Princeps, a pure mistake, or an incidental translation, remains an open-ended

inquiry. What can be confirmed is, as Terence Cave suggests, that More’s text moves by

means of translation, and that different interpretations of the text lead to different

translations, and vice versa. Robinson’s choice of words was pivotal because various

translations were based on his edition, thus it in fact could be considered that a

Robinsonian Utopia has been perpetuated for centuries and travelled across national-

cultural borders.

Editions Mandarin translations Romanisation

Liu, 1935 烏託伯 wu tuo bo

Dai, 1956 烏托普 wu tuo pu

Liu, 1957 烏託伯 wu tuo bo

Guo, 1966 烏托布斯王 wu tuo bu si wang

Liu, 1978 烏托波 wu tuo bo

Dai, 1982 烏托普國王 wu tuo pu guo wang

Dai, 1997 烏托普國王 wu tuo pu guo wang

386 Sacks 68.

126

Song, 2003 烏托帕斯 wu tuo pa si

Wu, 2005 烏托普國王 wu tuo pu guo wang

Wang, 2007 烏托普國王 wu tuo pu guo wang

Hu, 2007 & 2012 烏托普國王 wu tuo pu guo wang

Tang, 2011 烏托普國王 wu tuo pu guo wang

Sun & He, 2013 烏托普 (Utopos) wu tuo pu

Li, 2016 烏托珀斯

烏托珀斯國王(85)

wu tuo po si

wu tuo po si guo wang

A general pattern can be discerned here: transliteration has been applied in the main. This

three-syllable name “Utopus” is divided into two parts: wu tuo – the same two characters as

in the book title Utopia – and this is consistent throughout all renditions; the last syllable

“pus” is either rendered as bu si, pa si, po si, or pu. Following Robinson’s interpretation, and

in fact Dai Liuling’s second edition (1982), six editions append either 王 [wang, “King”] or

國王 [guo wang, “National King” in its literal sense] to the name Utopus, making it explicit

that the conqueror of the island was not just the Chief Officer but a king. These seven

editions are: Guo 1966, Dai 1982 and 1997, Wu 2005, Wang 2007, Hu 2007 and 2012, Tang

2011, and Li 2016, with Li using either transliteration or King in two different places where

Utopus appears. In his rendition, Wu Lei appended one line prior to the translation “King

Utopus”, specifying “the first king of the nation Utopia”. This additional insertion inside

the main text reaffirms the sense of monarchy, fundamentally twisting the original meaning.

Tang’s translation shows “King Utopus”, even though the word king does not appear in the

English text that runs parallel to his translation. What is intriguing is that Dai Liuling’s first

edition renders Utopus without “King”, but “King” has been added in his subsequent

editions. The change of reference text (from mainly a Russian one to the Yale edition)

evidently plays in this shift, which simultaneously reflects a deficient level of understanding

of this Latin word and the political system implied.

The other editions apply transliteration in the case of Utopus. There is, however,

one subtlety in the 1935 and 1957 editions that makes the translation perceptively exquisite.

These two editions render Utopus as 烏託伯, wu tuo bo, which without an attentive eye

127

would easily be taken as similar to all the other editions that applied transliteration. The

application of transliteration is not incorrect; yet in this case, 烏託伯, wu tuo bo is much

more profound. The third character – 伯 bo – has proximity to the sound “pus”, but more

importantly this character denotes an elder(ly) uncle in Mandarin. Uncle could be a blood

relation or otherwise; it could also be without particular meaning but simply a familiar way

of addressing an elderly person. Most crucially, though, it could serve as a signification

conjuring respect. In this case, Utopus is no longer deemed to be the monarch on high, but

a wise elder who is on an equal political footing with all citizens in Utopia and to whom

people look up to. If we reflect on the classical Chinese utopian counterparts, an

association is naturally made: that the ideal, well-governed country is led by the wise old

sage to whom citizens look up.

2.3 OFFICIAL TITLES: SYPHOGRANT, TRANIBOR, PHYLARCH, PROTOPHYLARCH

Another case that demonstrates the complexity and sophistication of More’s nomenclature

games is shown in the titles of the Utopian state officers: “syphogrant”, “tranibor”,

“phylarch”, and “protophylarch”. Syphogrant is the officer governing every thirty families

in one district and tranibor is the head of every ten syphogrants. Phylarch is the

corresponding “modern” name for syphogrant, whereas protophylarch is the same for

tranibor. All these titles are of More’s construction: a conflation of sophos (wisdom) plus

gerontes (the elderly), syphogrant can be explained as “old men of the sty”.387 Tranibor is

from thranos (bench) and bora (food), hence “bench-eater”. Paul Turner, in his much-closer-

to-anglicised translation, not only renders Tranibor as Bencheater, but also offers a

compelling interpretation of its etymology: Turner suggests that this coinage may have

close association with More’s experience in Lincoln’s Inn (which he entered in 1496).

More’s father and grandfather served in Lincoln’s Inn as butlers, and More himself was

there as a Reader. Here the meals were eaten together in a communal hall where members

were seated on benches. Senior members were referred to as Benchers.388 Phylarch is the

combination of phule (tribe) and archos (chief, ruler);389 protophylarch – with the prefix protos

387 Turner 119. 388 Turner 118. 389 Turner 118.

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– denotes the first tribal master. There already exists a divide in the languages used in the

storyline; that is, the official titles are presented in the ancient and the modern Utopian

tongues. The old and modernised names of the island – Abraxa and Utopia – serve as a

preview of the languages in parallel. On this textual peculiarity, Heiserman comments:

“More’s invention of a double set of names for offices, places, and personages, and his

mention of Egyptian visitors to Utopia, perhaps reflects Plato’s invention of double names,

which are Solon’s translations of Egyptian versions of Atlantean names.”390 Curiously, even

though the modernised names are provided in this Utopian discourse, they are mentioned

only once and, as Hythloday’s account proceeds, he refers to the officials only by their old

names, syphogrant and tranibor. Marina Leslie brilliantly observes of this act of naming:

“[Hythloday’s] insistence on using the old language allegedly not in use is, doubtless, a

reflection on the humanists’ defence of the study of Greek and Hebrew and the value of

original texts.”391 This device of naming that travels back and forth from modernised to

ancient Utopian languages, recalling the humanists’ defence of the study of old languages,

is absent in the Mandarin editions, because the meanings camouflaged behind the name

construction can barely be reproduced through transliteration, let alone reflect the

humanists’ defence of classical study.

Editions Syphogrant Tranibor Phylarch Protophylarch

Liu, 1935 里長

li zhang

鄉長392

xiang zhang

村長

cun zhang

N/A

Dai, 1956 攝護格朗特

she hu ge lang te

特朗尼菩爾

te lang ni po er

飛拉哈

fei la ha

首席飛拉哈

Chief fei la ha

Liu, 1957 村長

cun zhang

鄉長

xiang zhang

N/A N/A

Guo, 1966 里長

li zhang

鄉長

xiang zhang

族長

zu zhang

首席村長

Chief cun zhang

Liu, 1978 亭長

ting zhang

區長

qu zhang

里長

li zhang

N/A

390 Heiserman 171. 391 Leslie 69. 392 In Liu Linsheng’s version, tranibor is written as “tranibore”.

129

Dai, 1982 攝護格朗特

she hu ge lang te

特朗尼菩爾

te lang ni po er

飛拉哈

fei la ha

首席飛拉哈

Chief fei la ha

Song, 2003 「智叟」

zhi sou

崔倪伯

cui ni bo

族長

zu zhang

總族長

Chief zu zhang

Wu, 2005 瑟菲格蘭特

se fei ge lang te

特蘭尼玻爾

te lan ni bo er

菲勒哈

fei le ha

首席菲勒哈

Chief fei le ha

Wang, 2007 攝護格朗特

she hu ge lang te

特朗尼菩爾

te lang ni po er

飛拉哈

fei la ha

首席飛拉哈

Chief fei la ha

Hu, 2007 &

2012

攝護格朗特

she hu ge lang te

N/A 飛拉哈

fei la ha

首席飛拉哈

Chief fei la ha

Tang, 2011

攝護格朗特

she hu ge lang te

特朗尼菩爾

te lang ni po er

飛拉哈

fei la ha

首席飛拉哈

Chief fei la ha

Sun & He,

2013

Styward

斯蒂沃德

si di wo de

Bench-eater

賁慈特

ben ci te

District

Controller

管片員

guan pian yuan

Senior District

Controller

高級管片員

Senior guan pian

yuan

Li, 2016 攝護格朗特

she hu ge lang te

下級長官(5)

junior officer

特朗尼菩爾

te lang ni po er

高級長官(5)

senior officer

飛拉哈

fei la ha

首席飛拉哈

Chief fei la ha

For the ones that use transliteration, I provide Romanisation immediately after the translated name.

For the ones that adopt official titles familiar to target readers, I leave out Romanisation.

Dai Liuling’s and all editions published since the twenty-first century apply transliteration

to these official titles.393 In the earlier editions, on the other hand, 里長、村長、鄉長、

族長、亭長 and 區長 are used to refer to those official titles. Logically speaking, they are

393 Song’s rendition of syphogrant is an exception. In addition, Li Lingyan, while using transliteration in the main text, refers to syphogrant and tranibor as “junior [or literally “inferior”] officer” and “senior officer” in her preface.

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adopted for the sake of convenience and for familiarity to target readers. However, one

problem arises with this kind of rendering. These titles do not necessarily translate to the

corresponding administrative systems. 里長 can be defined as the precinct chief, 村長 as

chief of a village, 鄉長 as chief of a town, 族長 as master of a tribe, and區長 as head of

a district. Three translations render Tranibor with 鄉長 , which indeed is larger in

administrative terms than either 里長 or 村長 . However, the latter two are not used

interchangeably in real life. Nor does 族長 hold corresponding power as 村長 or 里長 –

the way Liu’s (1935) and Guo’s (1966) editions translate syphogrant and phylarch,

respectively. Additionally, Liu Lihua’s version of syphogrant (or Styward to be precise) is 亭

長, which is a bizarre title, unheard of.

A curious exception is that none of the 1935, 1957, or 1978 editions includes

protophylarch in the core text. Furthermore, Liu Chengshao’s 1957 version even omits both

modernised titles, phylarch and protophylarch. One potential explanation of this exclusion lies

in the translators’ interpretation of the text; that is, they did not consider it necessary to

translate the modernised names on the basis of equivalence. Or rather, they deemed it

redundant to include both, which reflected their failure to grasp the intricate humanist jest

behind More’s carefully designed names and, in this specific case, failed to participate in

Hythloday’s humanist defence.

Song Meihua’s 2003 edition distinguishes itself among all other translations that

either opt for transliteration or recognisable administrative titles. Instead, Song creates a

name for – or a way of addressing – syphogrant that is both familiar to Mandarin speakers

and applicable to the original meaning. The noun construction 智叟 is a conflation of 智

[zhi, “wisdom”] and 叟 [sou, “an elder”], which naturally recalls wise old men. Song

provides a footnote specifying the Greek root of syphogrant is “sophos [wisdom] +

gerontes [old man]”;394 by rendering it 智叟, the Mandarin equivalent fundamentally serves

a function similar to the original – that is, the meaning of the term is manifest in decoding

and/or conflating the two significations that constitute the term. Song Meihua translates

these four official titles on the basis of contextual equivalence. Through this contextual

equivalence, in this case in particular, Song reduplicates the scenario in which the

394 Song 65.

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reportorial More introduces the titles in both their ancient tongue and in their modernised

Utopian tongue. The way she attempts to reproduce this contextual equivalence is that she

literally translates syphogrant and transliterates tranibor, followed by modernised, easily-

associated administrative titles to represent phylarch and protophylarch.

Most of the invented names in Utopia are of the “Hythlodaeus” type, designed to

be immediately intelligible. Turner’s renditions of Hythloday (Nonsenso) and Anyder

(Nowater) successfully duplicate this effect. However, Liu Lihua’s and the Penguin

Mandarin edition, whose reference text is Turner’s, fail to convey that same effect. The

same goes for most of the Mandarin translated names. Of the nomenclature schemes

examined so far, the general pattern is that translation is taking place on the level of

proximity to sound. There are cases where transliteration is ruled out but we are provided

with a name that falls into the target context; for instance, Song’s 智叟 – wise old man –

for syphogrant. The fact that this is a rare case indicates the huge gap between the source

language (be it Latin or English) and the target language, Mandarin. Target readers,

however, are still able to appreciate this canonical work exactly because translation is

happening – despite the degree or aspect – during the linguistic transferal and this is what

makes a cross-cultural narrative like Utopia meaningful and transcendental.

2.4 ETHNOLOGICAL NAMES

The largest group of coinage by More is the ethnologic names designating non-Utopians:

three appearing in Book One (Polylerites, Achorians, Macarians); and four in Book Two

(Anemolians, Nephelogetes, Alaopolitans, Zapoletes). Instead of writing up an analysis of

each name translated in each of the Mandarin editions, I focus on the Polylerites as an

analysis of overall patterns.

Polylerites means “the People of Much Nonsense”, a conflation of polus (much)

and leros (nonsense). 395 They are the people Raphael Hythloday encounters during his

Persian travels, who are self-sufficient, with abundant resources, paying tribute to the

Persian king while maintaining self-governance. Unlike the volatile dichotomy of Utopian

self-negation and non-Utopian ethical implications that James Simmonds propounds, the

Polylerites do not fit easily into either category. Setting up a counterexample for the

395 Cambridge Utopia (1995) 71n37.

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English society that treated theft and murder as crimes of equal severity, the Polylerites

punish criminals with strenuous labour, distinguishing them with a cut in the tip of one ear,

a distinctive colour of outfit, and a special badge, among other measures. These measures

that the Polylerites adopt are carefully evaluated and implemented, and have had positive

results; for instance, “never a year goes by in which some are not pardoned as a reward for

submissive behaviour” (75). Polylerites, in this context, can in no way be dismissed as

“People with Much Nonsense”. In fact, to ridicule More’s contemporaneous English

society, the Polylerites ought to be deemed contrary to what their name suggests, that is,

People with Much Sense, because they have had the insight of attempting to destroy the

root of all evils by making thieves bondslaves, serving as a sardonic contrast to More’s

society, which easily prosecuted thieves to death. In this case, even though this invented

proper noun does not identify any prominent ethical or moral feature of the ethnologic

group that it represents, it satirises English society, the counter mirror of this entire

Utopian discourse.

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The translation strategy in rendering Polylerites fits the general pattern: transliteration with

proximity to pronunciation, with minor variations. The very first edition (Liu, 1935)

translates the first syllable of Polylerites – po – suffixing it with the character 人 that

primarily signifies “people”. By rendering Polylerites as “People of Po”, the 1935 Liu

edition reduces this Greek connotation that highlights nonsense into a mere signification

of ethnology, distinguished by 人. This way of presenting a nationality or ethnological

name by abbreviation was not uncommon, and is to be found in this same edition as well

as non-literary sources elsewhere. As in other places in Liu Linsheng’ edition, when More’s

coinage is translated, Liu includes the original name in parentheses, often alongside a

Editions Polylerites Romanisation

Liu, 1935 婆人(Polylerites)(假設的) po ren (Polylerites)

(hypothetical)

Dai, 1956 波利來賴人 bo li lai lai ren

Liu, 1957 Polylerites 設想的 Polylerites (imagined)

Guo, 1966 波族人 bo zu ren

Liu, 1978 塔拉斯托利亞 ta la si tuo li ya

Dai, 1982,

1997

波利來賴塔人 bo li lai lai ta ren

Song, 2003 「頗多無識」「Po duo wu shi 」

Wu, 2005 波利拉瑞特人 bo li la rui te ren

Wang, 2007 波利來賴塔人 bo li lai lai ta ren

Hu, 2007 &

2012

波利來賴塔人 bo li lai lai ta ren

Tang, 2011 波利來賴塔人 bo li lai lai ta ren

Sun & He,

2013

Tallstoria

陶斯陶瑞亞

Tao si tao rui ya

Li, 2016 波利人 bo li ren

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definition, also in parentheses. The case of the Polylerites is no exception: “婆人(Polylerites)

(假設的)”. “假設的” in the second parenthesis contains Liu’s definition of the Polylerites,

meaning “hypothetical”. Curiously, the definition Liu provides is nothing close to the

etymological explication of polus and leros. Instead, “hypothetical” is used to define the

Polylerites, downplaying the Greek nomenclatural play embedded in this name and yet at

the same time underlining the make-believe nature of the coinage.

Liu Chengshao’s 1957 edition, published two decades later, makes a slight

adjustment to, though not an improvement on, this rendition. Conceivably Liu Chengshao

has referenced, or copied, Liu Linsheng’s translation: this 1957 edition takes up the

presentation format of the original name, with a definition, yet leaves out the Mandarin

translation of the proper noun. The definition resembles and differs from Liu Linsheng’s

version in an intriguing way: whereas 假設 means hypothetical, 設想 – with one character,

設, in common – designates “envisaged or imagined”. This definitional adjective may have

implied an important feature of Utopia and Utopian names, but it is nowhere close to what

Polylerites indicates. At best, it reinforces the fictional characteristic without being able to

stir an analytical response to deciphering this exotic name. Guo’s rendition, on the other

hand, is a three-character rendition: 波族人. With the proper name mark underlining 波,

we understand that it refers to the name, Polylerites. 族人 refers to people of the tribe;

with the three characters combined together, “People of bo” is thus denoted. Despite the

same strategy in transliteration, the character 波 [bo] that Guo adopts differs from Liu’s in

written form, pronunciation, and meaning. Meaning, in this case, is less relevant, as both 波

and 婆 do not carry particular signification and could have easily been replaced by other

characters with proximity to pronunciation.

Dai Liuling’s three editions give us the first complete transliteration of the

Polylerites: 波利來賴人[bo li lai lai ren] (1956) and 波利來賴塔人 [bo li lai lai ta ren]

(1997). What is to be pointed out here is that the explanatory notes suggest a different

interpretation of the priority of the source text. Dai’s 1956 edition points out precisely that

Polylerites is a conflation of Greek roots, polus (much) and leros (nonsense). The note ends

with the translator’s comment that More is probably trying to suggest, via this coinage, that

if we were to believe that such people did exist, it would be ridiculous. 396 This

396 Dai (1956) 161.

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interpretation is removed from Dai’s later editions, giving way to a much more general

definition: “a coinage made of Greek components, signifying ‘complete nonsense’”.397 It is

clear here that these two editions are devoid of the etymological explication that was made

specific in Dai’s first translation. This change in explanatory notes also indicates the priority

of the text as seen by the translator: Dai had the liberty in his re-translations to modify the

notes, but he chose to simplify this definition. While the first version highlights a thorough

interpretation etymologically and semantically, the later versions seem to have been aimed

at a wider audience, for whom the general definition is provided.

Dai’s transliteration was the model followed by Wu (2005), Wang (2007), Hu (2007

& 2012), and Tang (2011). Wu Lei’s transliteration of the coinage (波利拉瑞特人 [bo li la

rui te ren]) is not exactly identical to Dai’s; yet the parenthetical note inserted into the main

text reveals a trace of duplication. Wang Jin, on the other hand, simply adopts Dai’s

translation of Polylerites without supplying the original name or explanatory note. The

2013 Penguin edition transliterates this ethnological name as well. What distinguishes it,

like the rest of invented names appearing in the Penguin edition, is a result of the chosen

reference-text, namely Paul Turner’s translation. Turner anglicises and renders Polylerites as

Tallstoria, with a footnote signifying the original coinage Polyleritae and its etymology. Sun

and He transliterate Tallstoria as 陶斯陶瑞亞 [tao si tao rui ya], without any further

explanation. Even with cross-referencing the English text in the same volume, readers

would merely grasp that it is a transliteration. All that is intended to be conveyed through

Polylerites, or the People of Much Nonsense, is unreservedly misplaced in Sun and He’s

collaboration. The earlier edition by Liu Lihua (1978) modelled on Turner’s text also

transliterates Tallstoria, again with minor variation: 塔拉斯托利亞 [ta la si tuo li ya]. This

edition comes with ample endnotes, thirty-four in Book One and thirty-one in Book Two.

However, without including Turner’s glossary in which More’s coinages are made

intelligible, she participates in the fun only halfway.

Song’s rendition of Polylerites distinguishes itself among all the others that adopt

transliteration. Hers is proximity to both sound and meaning: 頗多無識 [po duo wu shi].

The first two characters stand for “pretty” and “many” respectively, altogether reflecting

what polus, whose Greek root “polys” meaning “many”, signifies. 無 , as appeared in

397 Dai (1982) 25; Dai (1997) 59.

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Zhuangzi’s無何有之鄉 (wu he you zi xiang), designates “none”. The fourth character, 識,

like the majority of the Chinese characters, has multiple meanings. Combined with 知 (to

know), it means knowledge; conflated with 常 (often), it means common sense. In either

case, a cognitive element is strongly embedded in the character 識 – “pretty much non-

sense/no-knowledge” – drawing Song’s rendition closest to the original intended meaning.

In Li Lingyan’s 2016 edition, Persia is given an explanatory note, whereas

Polylerites is not explicated. The transliteration of Polylerites is “bo li ren”. Using the same

character 波 [bo] for Persia and Polylerites, readers may instinctually associate the two

together, without realising that these are two separate groups of people only inhabited

adjacently. What is intriguing is that footnotes are not scarce in this edition; in most cases,

toponyms and historical figures are sufficiently defined. Li’s choice of annotating Persia but

not Polylerites shows that More’s naming scheme does not register in her interpretation

and that historicity appears to have outweighed fictionality in Li’s translational priority.

3 PERORATION: “RATHER WISH THAN HOPE”

Ironic statements are present in places both obvious and subtle in Utopia. Unironic

statements are to be found as well, the most prominent one being the peroration. Ward

Allen suggests that More is plain and direct, “speaking in his own voice” in the beginning

and the concluding scenes of Utopia.398 The concluding remarks by the persona More

reveal the author’s (dis)belief about the ideal commonwealth just portrayed, when viewed

unironically. It is “the most dramatic moment in all of Utopia”, as it is when readers are to

discover whether Hythloday’s portrayal of the Utopian Commonwealth has successfully

won over the approbation of his audience, More and Giles.399 Whether Thomas More

really believed in the practicality and possibility of the Utopian Commonwealth remains

open-ended. More had taken time and effort to not just compose the book, but also

398 See Ward Allen, “The Tone of More’s Farewell to Utopia: A Reply to J. H. Hexter”, Moreana 51 (1976): 117. Quoted in Thomas White, “Festivitas, Utilitas, et Opes: The Concluding Irony and Philosophical Purposed of Thomas More’s Utopia”, Albion 10 (Supplement, 1978): 136. 399 See Elizabeth McCutcheon, “Thomas More, Raphael Hythlodaeus, and the Angel Raphael”, Studies in English Literature 9 (1969): 21-38; and Astell 306.

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solicited commendatory epistles and verses from his humanist coterie. It would have

seemed natural that he took faith in the practicality of Utopia, and the paratextual materials

intending to make readers believe in it seemed to have confirmed as much. Why would the

reportorial More have overthrown it at the closing of Utopia by saying, “[m]eantime, while I

can hardly agree with everything [Hythloday] said […], yet I freely confess that in the

Utopian commonwealth there are many features that in our own societies I would like

rather wish than expect to see” (111)? The sentence alone leaves room for interpretation,

and the translation of it further generates speculative space. The table below shows each

translator’s reading of the peroration.

Editions Mandarin translations Reverse translation

Liu, 1935 祇好希望我們城鎮中，拿這些

東西，做參考罷了。

I can only hope that our town

will take some of these things as

references.

Dai, 1956 烏托邦國有許多事物，我雖願

意英國有，但不能希望英國

有。

There are many things in Utopia

that I am willing for England to

have, but I can’t hope for it to

have them.

Liu, 1957 只好希望我們的社會，能拿這

些當參考就好了。

I can only hope that our society

can take these as references.

Guo, 1966 我希望烏托邦有許多制度在將

來可以在我們的國家裡實行。

I hope many of the regimes in

Utopia can be carried out in our

nation in the future.

Liu, 1978 我不敢奢望，但我的確希望能

夠見到烏托邦共和國的許多制

度，有朝一日能夠在歐洲實

現。

I’m afraid to make any wild

wishes, but I do hope to see

many of the regimes in the

Republic of Utopia being

established in Europe one day.

Dai, 1982 烏托邦國家有非常多的特徵，

我雖願意我們的這些國家也具

有，但畢竟難以希望看到這種

特徵能夠實現。

The nation of Utopia has many

traits. Although I wish our

countries would have them, it is

rather difficult to hope for the

actualisation of these traits.

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Song, 2003 我雖然衷心期盼，但不敢奢

望，烏托邦國的許多特色會在

我們自己的社會裡實現。

Although I truly long for many of

the characteristics of Utopia to

come to be in our society, I

cannot expect them to.

Wu, 2005 我希望自己的國家也有這些優

點，然而這個想法卻是不太現

實的。

I wish my own country had these

qualities, and yet the thought of it

is unrealistic.

Wang, 2007

There are many things in the

Commonwealth of Utopia that I

rather wish, than hope, to see

followed in our government.

烏托邦的很多特徵，我希望我

們的國家也能具有，但也僅僅

是希望而已。

Utopia possesses a lot of

characteristics I wish our country

could have, but I also wish they

would stay as wishes.

Hu, 2007 &

2012

我情願承認，拉斐爾的所有描

述都是真實的，烏托邦國家有

非常多的特徵也都是真正存在

的，因為這是我希望我們這些

國家也同樣具有的東西，甚至

希望我們的國家會是另一個烏

托邦。但心底又有個聲音在

說，遙不可及的現實只能永遠

是個夢，畢竟難以看到這種特

徵會成為現實。但我寧願相信

這份寧靜和陶然的生活，就存

在於這個世界的某個角落。

I would rather admit all of

Raphael’s depiction to be true for

many traits found in the nation of

Utopia truly exist, and I want our

countries to have the exact same

things. I even hope that our

countries may be another Utopia.

However, deep down in my heart,

there is a voice saying that in

reality it is out of reach, and it can

only stay as a dream. After all, it is

hardly possible for these traits to

come to be reality. However, I

would rather believe that this

tranquil and contented style of

living exists somewhere in the

corner of this world.

Tang, 2011 There are many things in the

The nation of Utopia indeed has

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Commonwealth of Utopia that I

rather wish, than hope, to see

followed in our governments.

烏托邦這個國家確實有著很多

優點，我不只是希望，而且願

意看到這些東西在我們的政府

裡出現。

a lot of excellent qualities. I don’t

only hope, but am also willing to

see them in our government.

Sun & He,

2013

There are many features of the

Utopian Republic which I

should like – though I hardly

expect – to see adopted in

Europe.

烏托邦共和國的許多特徵—我

希望歐洲也能採用—可是我很

難指望這能夠實現。

The United Republic of Utopia

has so many traits – I hope

Europe adopts some of them –

but I can hardly have faith for it

to come true.

Li, 2016 烏托邦共同體中確實有許多東

西是我但願（與其說是希望，

不如說是但願）能看到我們的

政府仿效的。

The united community of Utopia

possesses many things that I am

willing (instead of hoping, I

would rather use willing) to see

our government take references.

A sense of “knowing its impracticality” is delivered in the majority of the Mandarin

editions, with two major exceptions. Guo Xiangzhang’s 1966 edition unveils only the

positive take on the Utopian narrative (“I hope many of the regimes in Utopia can be

carried out in the future”), whereas Tang Yi’s 2011 edition mistakenly stresses More’s

willingness to see Utopia’s features being implemented (“I don’t only hope, but am also

willing to see them executed in our government”). Guo’s and Tang’s versions fail to render

the sense of “rather wish than expect to see”, therefore making an originally negotiable

opinion to be a straightforward, definitive conclusion, that More is positive about its

implementation.

The rest of the translations do render the unrealistic vibe, differing in degree. Both

Liu Linsheng’s (1935) and Liu Changshao’s (1957) used the term “reference”, or more

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precisely, taking Utopia as a model to aspire to. Interestingly, however, with a few changes

in syntax, the 1935 edition reveals a tone of passivity, whereas the 1957 edition expresses a

veiled sense of faith in Utopia.

Dai Liuling uses “cannot hope” in his first rendition (1956), and modifies this to

“difficult to be hoped” in the later editions. Hu Fengfei’s translation expands from the

original text, making an originally simple statement into a short passage avowing the

author’s vision:

I even hope that our countries may be another Utopia. However, deep down in my heart, there is a voice saying that in reality it is out of reach, and it can only stay as a dream. After all, it is hardly possible for these traits to come to be reality. However, I would rather believe that this tranquil and contented style of living exists somewhere in the corner of this world.

Hu’s addition clarifies the ambivalent attitude towards Utopia. Firstly, it does not deny the

impracticality of the Utopian traits. It admits but simultaneously downplays the pejorative

connotation, ending up with a slightly repressed hopeful note. Thomas More, represented

here in Hu’s translation, would rather believe that Utopia does exist because he would want

his country to be another Utopia. However, Hu’s understanding of Utopia, as manifest in

his expanded translation, reveals his misreading and the common association with the

Chinese archetypes of an ideal realm that is often an idyllic representation. Tranquillity

seems to be an instinctual qualification of a utopian realm; More’s Utopia, however, is not

immune from warfare. In fact, men and women alike are to receive military training. While

they do not initiate war unless necessary, the Utopians hire mercenaries to fight for them,

in a way considering the latter’s lives less worthy of their own. Hu’s addition reflects his

level of understanding of Utopia, and possibly his own perspectives of what Utopia ought

to be like, an idyllic representation closer to Peach Blossom Spring. All those seemingly logical

add-ons, however, betrays the authorial intention, making Hu’s rendition more of a

rewriting, or refraction, of Utopia.


No new translations were produced in China during the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976),

whereas Guo Xiangzhang’s edition was sponsored by the UN and published in Taiwan,

both of which make evident the influence of what Genette terms factual paratext. After the

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opening policy of the Chinese government since 1977, there has been a spring of Mandarin

Utopias in China, whereas the re-translation of Utopia has been relatively less popular in

Taiwan, having only seen the production of one in the twenty-first century. This

phenomenon will later find resonance in Utopia’s afterlives, especially in how utopia is

being appropriated: More’s Utopia is popularised and utilised as a propaganda in China by

the Chinese Communist Party, whereas in Taiwan, Utopia itself has received less attention

than its subgenres such as science fiction that have appropriated this sixteenth-century

neologism.

In this phase of the Utopian sojourn, we have delved into each standalone

Mandarin translation from 1935 to 2016. It began with Liu Linsheng’s abridged edition,

followed by Dai Liuling’s translation two decades later, modelled on a 1953 Russian text.

Dai’s was the first scholarly translation of Utopia and a more systematic attempt to place

this canonical work in context. With many of his own words being passed off as the

original, Liu Chengshao’s self-published volume appears to be a free adaptation, love-

oriented, especially in view of his dedication – an intimate paratext in Genette’s

terminology – to Ms Chang Yixuan. Guo Xiangzhang’s 1966 edition comes with a preface

translated from the Japanese scholar Shūkotsu Togawa while his main text follows an

English source. Liu Lihua’s 1978 translation was the first to reference the Penguin 1965

edition and, like Paul Turner’s English equivalents of More’s coinages, Liu Lihua attempted

their Mandarin equivalents, “拉斐爾・無稽” as Raphael Hythloday being the prime

exemplar. Dai Liuling worked on a retranslation of Utopia in the 1970s and published two

versions in China and Taiwan, in 1982 and 1997 respectively, with the latter appending non-

authorial illustrations as well as minor shifts in paratexts. The twenty-first century saw

seven more translations: while the 2003 one was published in Taiwan with the most

complete authorial paratexts, the other six were released in China, with Wu Lei’s (2005) and

Hu Fengfei’s (2007 and 2011) translations being the most distinguished in terms of how

they steered off from More’s original Utopia through their own refractions, which aptly

transformed them into adaptations, or “the ‘freest’ form of translation”.400 Wu Lei’s is

coloured with additional, and often irrelevant, iconic paratexts, whereas Hu Fengfei’s is

painted with his own illustrational portrayals of various scenes in Utopia, which befits

Hutcheon’s reconsideration of adaptation as “creative interpretation/interpretive

400 Newmark 46.

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creation”.401 We also have the more “plain” editions such as Tang Yi’s (2011) and Li

Lingyan’s (2016), in terms of translational quality and a lack of authorial paratexts. The

translation history suggests that Mandarin Utopias have blossomed in a relatively short

period of time (compared to English ones) in terms of the number of editions, and that

they have been refracted through fairly diverse lenses, even though during recent years

those lenses appear to have been less thoroughly examined from a paratranslational

standpoint.

Linda Hutcheon’s A Thoery of Adaptation begins with a quotation from the

American playwright Alfred Uhry: “Adapting is a bit like redecorating”.402 The book ends

with her analogy with storytelling: “We retell – and show again and interact anew with –

stories over and over; in the process, they change with each repetition, and yet they are

recognizably the same. […] In the working of the human imagination, adaptation is the

norm, not the exception”. 403 Of the Mandarin Utopias that qualify as adaptation, Liu

Chengshao’s imagination demonstrates itself in the additional passages disguised as the

author’s original words, envisaging what love entails and the qualities that an ideal society

encompasses. Wu Lei’s imagination, on the other hand, is manifested in those pictorial

additions. In Hu Fenghei’s edition, in which he has de facto retold a story resembling a travel

narrative, we see a heightened sense of human imagination at work, again reaffirming

Hutcheon’s assertion that the act of adaptation “always involves both (re-)interpretation

and (re-)creation”.404 In this case, the translator is an adaptor and a commentator: fidelity

criticsm does not apply in adaptive translations that are, in Hutcheon’s words, “taking

possession of another’s story, and filtering it […] through one’s own sensibility, interests,

and talents”.405 The intriguing intersection of adaptation and translation of Utopia emerges

here: that adaptation entails a level of imagination, and translating Utopia (to whichever

target language) is, as McCutcheon postulates, a creative process. Such an intersection

encourages dialogues that go beyond the printed text into a heterocosm inspiring

alternatives to be conceived. More’s Utopia, travelling across linguistic and cultural

borderlines, is transformed by its (re-)translations and is itself an active player that

transforms how modern-day readers utilise this term.

This chapter has also delved into More’s invented names and the peroration as case

401 Hutcheon 18. 402 Hutcheon n.p. 403 Hutcheon 117. 404 Hutcheon 8. 405 Hutcheon 18.

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studies for translational comparison. All the Utopian names that are rendered into

Mandarin reflect the translation strategies regarding foreign names and at the same time

show a less systematic use of explanatory notes on the nomenclature; in other words,

More’s coinages do not receive the attention that they deserve. In some cases, the names

are reduced to being less important than biblical references or toponyms; whereas in other

cases, their meanings are silenced without further attention. I selected Polylerites for

discussion as an epitome of the translational pattern for the Utopian ethnologic names.

Two general points are to be summarised: firstly, transliteration has been the strategy

adopted in the main when it comes to rendering the Utopian names, not limited to

ethnologic names. There is a slight exception in Song’s rendition: while she renders

Polylerites with proximity to both sound and meaning, her other invented names fit the

general pattern of transliteration. There are a few subtle variations but they do not suffice

to form a pattern. Secondly, the Penguin bilingual edition (2013) transliterates those foreign

names as well; but it differs from the rest because of its reference text, which invents

anglicised equivalents (as opposed to the general pattern of retaining the original invented

names). That along with the fact that it is a rendition without explanatory notes or glossary

(unlike its reference text, Paul Turner’s 1965 Penguin English edition), makes it an exotic

rendition.

Lyman Sargent notes that the overlooking of the wordplays by translators has

resulted in a simpler Utopia than the one that was published five centuries ago.406 Most of

the Mandarin Utopias have indeed walked right into this blind spot, with More’s coinages

transliterated without further handling. However, what has truly resulted in a simpler Utopia,

I believe, is less about the wordplays but much more about overlooking the whole

paratextual apparatus. The intrinsic differences of the source and target languages make

rendering invented names gruelling; yet whether to include the authorial paratexts is an

option, a judgment call by the mediating agents that marks a level of comprehension and

refraction. The next phase of the Utopian journey shall further bring readers to the

Utopian paratexts, the textual periphery of Utopia proper, the significance of which is by

no means marginal.

406 Sargent (2016) 184-85.

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CHAPTER FOUR.

FRAMING UTOPIA: MORE’S PARATEXTS IN MANDARIN

The fourth phase of our Utopian textual journey focuses on commendation, the primary

part of Utopia’s initial paratextual apparatus. With the funding of the team project

Dislocations: Practices of Cultural Transfer in the Early Modern Period, Terence Cave edited the

volume Thomas More’s Utopia in Early Modern Europe: Paratexts and Contexts (2008), devoted

specifically to the study of paratexts of Utopia’s early modern editions. The contributors

aimed at piecing together an integral picture of “how Utopia moved by means of

translation from culture to culture and of the ways in which particular versions offered

themselves to their readers”. When different paratexts are chosen, and their order and

arrangement played with, the same thing happens to the reading experience. What Cave

offers through this volume is a re-examination of the editions published between 1516 and

1643, to allow readers to re-create Utopia in their own ways. Five years before Cave’s edited

collection, the leading utopian scholar Elizabeth McCutcheon had already published an

essay discussing the ancillary materials of the first four Latin editions of Utopia – this time

using “parerga” to refer to paratexts. McCutcheon was not the first scholar who noted the

intriguing role that paratexts have occupied in the publication and re-publication of Utopia.

Peter Allen and Warren Wooden, for instance, contributed some pivotal discussions on the

subject in the 60s and 70s.407 Both the Yale edition of the Complete Works of St. Thomas More

(volume IV) and Allen’s essay initiated a scholarly interrogation of paratexts from the 60s

onwards, whereas in earlier times the prefatory letters were reprinted, in Allen’s words,

merely “as literary curiosities” rather than as having any serious contribution to the reading

of Utopia.408 What McCutcheon did, instead, was to highlight the changes in the paratextual

materials, both content and order, among the four editions published between 1516 and

1518, hence calling attention to how the changing paratexts had shaped the reading of

Utopia. More recently, Csaba Maczelka’s doctoral thesis (2013)409 investigates paratextuality

and dialogicity in early modern English utopias, with More’s Utopia naturally being his first

407 Peter Allen, “Utopia and European Humanism: The Function of the Prefatory Letters and Verses”, Studies in the Renaissance 10 (1963): 91-107; and Warren W. Wooden, “A Reconsideration of the Parerga of Thomas More’s Utopia”, A Quarterly Journal Concerned with British Studies 10 (1978): 151-60. 408 P. Allen 91. 409 Csaba Maczelka, “Poetics in the Paratextual Poems of Thomas More’s Utopia”, PhD Thesis (Szeged: University of Szeged, 2013).

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case study. Such a project with regard to Mandarin Chinese, however, has never been

attempted; discussions of More’s paratexts have been at best mentioned in passing in

review articles of Utopia. In investigating how Utopia’s textual legacy has blossomed, as it

were, in Mandarin, this chapter aims to explore this compelling yet under-researched field

by offering a close reading of the anthumous paratexts, each followed by an examination

of whether – and how – it is rendered in Mandarin. After examining the anthumous

paratexts, this chapter shall take a deeper look inside the Mandarin Utopias. The last two

parts – paratextual and visual – tackle Utopia’s immediate afterlives, meaning those paratexts

printed in the same volumes. The paratextual deals with prefaces written by the translators,

also known as allographic paratexts in Genette’s terminology, whereas the visual looks into

book covers and illustrations, with the aim of seeing how Utopia has been repackaged and

refracted through those intermediating factors, textual and otherwise.

1 AUTHORIAL PARATEXTS OF THE MARCH 1518 EDITION

When put together, the authorial paratexts form a strong, intricate frame for Utopia, also

creating a delicate ruse for the unwary readers who fail to grasp the rhetorical design

encasing – and at the same time embedded in – Utopia, which aimed at creating “sham

historicity”.410 This complex prefatory machinery is a collaborative effort by More’s and

Erasmus’s circle of friends. In addition to serving purposes common to paratexts such as

endorsement and commendation, they – both the contributors and contributions – work

towards one aim, that is, to present Utopia in a serio-comic, half solemn, half jeu d’esprit

kind of frame, adding tension and layers of reading to a book that seems on the surface to

be a simple travel account. The whole of the paratextual apparatus, authored by various

names, is of immense value in terms of both research and jocularity because, as Allen

notes, “[t]he illusion is a sort of humanistic conceit or extended metaphor which, since all

the commentators understand its real meaning, they can play with at great length, adding

further facets to the quasi-realistic world More has invented”.411

Since the March 1518 edition published by Johannes Froben in Basel is, by

consensus, the most authoritative edition, the one that scholars tend to adopt as source text

410 Baker-Smith (1991) 76.

411 P. Allen 101.

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or point of reference, a list of the paratexts printed in this volume will be given here, in the

order in which each appeared:

1. Epistle from Desiderius Erasmus to Johannes Froben

2. Epistle from Guillaume Budé to Thomas Lupset

3. Hexastichon written by Anemolius

4. The new Utopian map (now called tabula instead of figura)

5. The Utopian alphabet, Utopian tetrastichon, and its Latin translation

6. Epistle from Peter Giles to Jerome Busleyden

7. Epistle from Thomas More to Peter Giles (titled “Prefatio”)

8. Epistle from Jerome Busleyden to Thomas More

9. Hexastichon by Gerard Geldenhouwer

10. Hexastichon by Cornelis de Schrijver

In addition to a close reading of the above, I will also examine More’s second epistle to

Giles, which was printed only in the 1517 Paris edition, and yet contains More’s own red

herrings about the fictitious nature of Utopia. I start by giving an overview of the authorial

paratexts, and continue by laying out their importance and function in the early modern

context, as well as discussing the double-appeal of the serio-comic nature that is so

essential to a reading of Utopia. The chapter then examines each paratextual item against

the Mandarin versions, to see how much has been included, how it has been translated, and

how far the translated paratexts work in terms of carrying across More’s intent.

2 SERIO LUDERE

Genette indicates how paratexts aim to “ensure for the text a destiny consistent with the

author’s purpose”.412 Utopia is a book replete with paratexts. Even within the first four

Latin editions published between 1516 and 1518, in which Thomas More had a hand, the

paratexts’ content and order are not always the same. In order to understand how paratexts

412 Genette 407. Quoted in Chloë Houston, New Worlds Reflected: Travel and Utopia in the Early Modern Period (Farnham: Ashgate, 2010) 2.

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have shaped the reading of Utopia in Mandarin, it is necessary to first understand the

functions and the importance of paratext in the Latin editions, before investigating the

roles that they take on during the process of linguistic and cultural transferal.

The first evident function of Utopian paratexts is, as a dust jacket works in modern

book printing, to endorse the book and its author for better marketability and reception.

Instead of merely being simple endorsements, however, Utopian paratexts were a display

of “self-praise” such as were commonly seen among the early modern humanist coterie, “a

vast mutual-admiration society”.413 Such praise was and is not uncommon, but the degree

of the indiscriminate commendation in the Utopian paratexts is unusual. Wooden uses the

terms “hyperbolic” and “blanket endorsement” to depict this phenomenon in the early

editions of Utopia.414 In addition to suggesting an analytical reading of a text that should

not be taken at face value, this seemingly uncritical adulation creates an irresolvable

paradox, often aiming at complicating the boundary between the fictive and the real.

The ancillary supplements took up around a quarter of Utopia as a printed

product.415 The proportion and the nature of the original Utopian paratexts makes Utopia a

collaborative cultural artefact born in a culture of epistolarity, and the status of the

Utopian paratexts has been emphatically linked to the reading of Utopia. As a work

complemented and completed by its paratexts, Utopia is a brilliant example of how the

reading of a work with and without those auxiliary items renders dynamic reading

experiences possible; a reading of Utopia without its authorial paratexts inevitably leads to a

fragmentary grasp of the work.

All this shifting of perspectives along with perplexing real and fictive dimensions

reinforced through paratexts is intended for a more general outlook, that is, to have readers

think critically and not simply take the text as it is. R. C. Elliott maintains that “the meaning

of the work as a whole is a function of the way those voices work with and against each

other”.416 Wooden suggests that the reading of Utopian paratexts should indeed be as

sensitive as that.417 Indeed, reading Utopia, especially along with its original paratexts, is like

witnessing a heated and yet amicable argument, in which viewpoints are brought up,

expanded, refuted, and unsettled. What differentiates this Utopian debate is that all the

413 Wooden 158. 414 Wooden 152-53. 415 J. C. Davis (2010) 36. 416 Elliott 31-32; quoted in Wooden 153. 417 Quoted in McCutcheon, “More’s Utopia and its Parerga (1516-1518), 1997”, Moreana Special Issue 51.201-02 (2015): 153, only that Wooden adopts the term “parerga” instead of “paratexts”. Hereafter McCutcheon (2015).

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absurdities and contradictions embedded in the Utopian paratexts constantly add layers to

the reading, making it—as McCutcheon calls it—a creative process: “there is a strikingly

witty correspondence as his fictions, ‘lies,’ evasions and paradoxes create their own

ontological status: he has turned an unstated debate over the status of a work of art into a

creative process.”418

What, then, makes “those voices work with and against each other”, and why? It is

indicated, although often overlooked, especially in Mandarin translations, in the book title.

While almost all translations provide only the three-syllable neologism Utopia as the book

title, the title page of the most authoritative Latin edition (March 1518) reads:

De optimo reipublicae statu deque nova insula Utopia, libellus vere aureus, nec minus salutaris quam festivus, clarissimi disertissimique viri Thomae Mori inclutae civitatis Londinensis civis et Vicecomitis

[On the Best State of a Commonwealth and on the New Island of Utopia, a Truly Golden Handbook, No Less Beneficial than Entertaining, by the Most Distinguished and Eloquent Author Thomas More Citizen and Undersheriff of the Famous City of London] (2-3)

Quentin Skinner asserts that Utopia should be read in the context and the genre of the

Renaissance political theory treatise, 419 especially so because the book title—De optimo

reipublicae statu deque nova insula Utopia—suggests that “[More’s] concern […] is not merely

or even primarily with the new island of Utopia; it is with ‘the best state of a

commonwealth’”. 420 Indeed, this line places the work in the political writing and

philosophical tradition of Plato’s Republic and Laws as well as Aristotle’s Politics.421 Skinner is

not alone in stressing the political seriousness of Utopia. George M. Logan contends that

the Lucianic spirit is incompatible with the solemnness of this grand book, and alerts

readers that “despite the wit and indirection of its manner, [Utopia] is a serious work of

418 McCutcheon (1983) 42. 419 Skinner is one among many who argue that Utopia should be read in the context of political thought. Robert M. Adams, who wrote the introduction to the 1995 Cambridge edition, asserts that Utopia needs to be understood “by setting the book in its contexts in More’s life and times, and in the history of political thought”. See Cambridge Utopia (1995) xvii. 420 Skinner 123, quoted in Ginzburg 1. 421 Cambridge Utopia (1995) xxii. Furthermore, the hexastichon written by Anemolius and the epistle from Giles to Busleyden both directly praise Utopia as having excelled Plato’s Republic. In the second letter from More to Giles, More also defends the book by pointing out that like all the ideal states described by philosophers, Utopia cannot be entirely perfect for everyone. See P. Allen 102.

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political philosophy”.422

While not dismissing Skinner’s emphasis on the political aspect of Utopia, Ginzburg

points out an obvious element that is overlooked: “Skinner starts his contextualizing

strategy with Utopia’s title, but his quotation is curiously incomplete.”423 Skinner, knowingly

or not, quotes only the first part of the original book title to sustain his argument. This

part of the book title draws attention to the gist of Utopia, that is, about the best state of a

commonwealth. Yet the second half of the title—libellus vere aureus, nec minus salutaris quam

festivus [a Truly Golden Handbook, No Less Beneficial than Entertaining]—is no less crucial in

forming a double-layered reading of Utopia. Let us for now focus on the second half of

the title, in which the two keywords unveil a trace of Lucianic influence: salutaris and festivus.

While salutaris means helpful, useful, or beneficial, a celebratory and festive connotation is

made explicit with festivus, often rendered as playful and entertaining. Whereas there are

scholars such as Skinner, Logan, and Peter Allen who focus on the salutaris dimension of

Utopia, Ginzburg notes C. S. Lewis’s assertion that possible misinterpretation “lies with

those modern readers who take the book au grand serieux”.424 Ginzburg further departs from

Lewis’s argument, bringing up the question of how Utopia is meant to be read by drawing

readers’ attention to festivus, but at the same time arguing that highlighting festivus in the

book title alone does not mean that he overlooks the serious side of Utopia. In fact, as C. R.

Thompson raises rhetorically in Translations of Lucian, “Why can’t we have it both ways?”425

Similarly, Ginzburg is encouraging readers to interpret it both ways in reading Utopia,

namely, to take in the serio-comic double focus of this piece of literary brilliance.426

Expanding from the Dutch humanist Geldenhauer’s verse, in which he emphasises

that the Utopian island abounds in the pleasant and the profitable,427 Schoeck argues that

the jeu d’esprit and the sense of urgency are not and should not be mutually exclusive, as

long as readers do not give weight to one side over the other. The same goes for what

Schoeck remarks in the opening of the same essay, that the deep sense of angst in More

422 Logan (1983) 7. 423 Ginzburg 1. See Skinner 123. 424 C. S. Lewis, English Literature in the Sixteenth Century Excluding Drama (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1954) 167. 425 Quoted in Ginzburg 21. 426 That said, in this essay Ginzburg is not discussing “both ways” but is primarily investigating the festivus via the paratextual items of Utopia. 427 J. C. Davis argues that the topics of profit, interest, and advantage are a leitmotif that operates throughout Utopia. See Davis (2010) 36.

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should not negate the fact that Utopia is loaded with festivitas.428 Similarly, McCutcheon

suggests that the ancillary items “emphasize the double appeal of the title page to the

festivum and the salutaris”. 429 Wooden re-emphasises both humour and seriousness, and

Schoeck argues that Utopia does have a serious purpose but that it must be read “through

an ironic structure”.430 Comparably, while interrogating the philosophical traditions behind

the composition of Utopia, Ginzburg recognises the influence of Republic on Utopia, but

further argues that “[More’s] Plato was filtered through Lucian”.431 Branham’s critique of

“artificial interpretative dichotomies” echoes Thompson’s appeal to read Utopia both

ways.432 Utopia has been translated and received in Mandarin in a similar manner; that is, the

festivitas dimension is largely overlooked. Not only is the naming in puns not rendered, but

the translator’s prefaces in general stress the political influence Utopia has had, while only

five editions (2016, 2013, 2007 & 2012, 2007, 2003)433 mention the fictional nature that

bears elements of jocularity.

Let us return to the book title before interrogating the relationship between

paratexts and the said double appeal. The partial title where the two key words appear in

both the 1516 and 1518 editions—nec minus salutaris quam festivus—was non minus utile quam

elegans in the 1517 Paris edition.434 Whether it is salutaris/festivus or utile/elegans, both cases

point to the Lucianic tradition of serio ludere, “to play seriously”, presenting serious points

in the form of jokes, that must not be dismissed.435 Together with Erasmus, More had

translated several of Lucian’s works. The fact that the 1519 Florence edition of Utopia was

appended to an edition of Lucian’s writings generates a direct association between the two

authors. Ginzburg substantiates this point by referring to the preface to Lucian’s Alexander,

seu pseudomantis. Perfunctorily or not, Erasmus used the same adjectives—utilis, festivus,

elegans—that appeared later in the early editions of Utopia.436 All this suggests a link among

428 Schoeck (1969) 19. 429 McCutcheon (2015) 139. 430 Schoeck (1969) 19. Of these commentaries on Utopia’s double appeal, I find Schoeck’s closest to home. 431 Ginzburg, 16. 432 Branham 25. 433 Guo Xiangzhang’s 1966 edition mentions the keyword “fiction”, but in the context of an enquiry as to whether Utopia ought to be read as a fiction or as an opinion, without the translator leaning towards either side. 434 The 1518 book title returned to the original one. See Ginzburg 2. 435 Cambridge Utopia (1995) xxv. 436 Ginzburg 12. Ginzburg suggests that similar traces can be found in their translations of Lucian’s writing, in which two of the preface addressees are Johannes Paludanus and Jerome Busleyden.

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these three humanists. Whereas Lucian was a Syrian satirist born in the second century,

More and Erasmus belonged to the early modern period, born in 1478 and 1466,

respectively. What then, did Lucian mean for these two Renaissance humanists? Lucian was

a key figure in developing the literary tradition of serio ludere; or what Bakhtin calls

“spoudogeloion” that points to a conflation of the serious and the laughable.437 Closely

linked to such ludic convention, this carnivalesque laughter shall be brought to the fore

here. In Rabelais and His World, Bakhtin discusses three antique sources for the Renaissance

conception of laughter: Hippocrates, Aristotle, and Lucian, the satire of the latter

highlighted carnivalesque laughter. 438 While Lucian’s influence on More is potent, the

quality of humour in Utopia differs from the Rabelaisian carnivalesque described by

Bakhtin. Carnivalesque highlights the grotesque, in which the grotesque body becomes an

arena where power reversal and subversiveness intersect, and where a different world finds

a ludicruous materialisation. Indeed, for Bakhtin, grotesque is a concept that “discloses the

potentiality of an entirely different world, of another order, another way of life.”439 On the

other hand, More’s Utopia mocks the institutional and humours the unwary; his playful

irony does not single out laughter, but an avid sense of the reversal is conveyed in his

language, word play, and the whole paratextual arrangement. Both aim at the reversal of

the current order: one via the grotesque and one via words. Reading Utopia without taking

in the Lucianic complexity therefore cannot be taken as a holistic reading; likewise,

translating Utopia without being sensitive to the double appeal means it loses the

transcendental profundity that is embedded in the entire narrative. “The complexities of

interpreting Utopia don’t, on the whole, derive from intricacies of languages; they are

matters of attitude and levels of ironic reversal.”440 This is perhaps the best reminder of

what a faithful translation of Utopia ought to be, which enquires into the cultural

transference of Utopia’s Mandarin translations and their paratexts.

These two humanists, incidentally or not, contributed prefatory letters and verses to the early editions of Utopia. See Ginzburg 13. 437 Katelis Viglas, “The Placement of Lucian’s Novel True History in the Genre of Science Fiction”, Interlitteraria 21.1 (2016): 160. 438 See Mikhail Bakhtin, Rabelais and His World, trans. Hélène Iswolsky (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1984) 66, 70. 439 Bakhtin 48. 440 Cambridge Utopia (1989) xxxi.

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3 NOTES ON AUTHORIAL PARATEXTS

3.1 A NOTE ON ERASMUS’S EPISTLE TO FROBEN

The epistle from Erasmus to Froben first appeared in 1518 and “leads off the [third]

edition”.441 Unlike most other Utopian paratexts that engage themselves with ambiguity,

this short epistle is relatively simple and plain, mainly to achieve the effect of endorsement.

Yet it is important that this short epistle “leads off the [third] edition”. To begin with, this

edition was under the imprint of Johann Froben, the addressee of the letter. It begins with

Erasmus’s praise of More’s merit, their close relationship, and how the well-educated

shared his high esteem for More. It places these two humanists in the same coterie, but at

the same time defends them from any possible questioning that may have dismissed

Erasmus’s adulation of More as tinted with personal favour because the others “see more

deeply into his merits” (5). Despite its short length, this epistle deserves attention not only

because of both the addressor’s and addressee’s fame or of the textual position in which

this letter is placed, but mainly because Erasmus was no longer just behind the scenes.

Erasmus’s engagement with Utopia started from the very beginning. In a letter from More

to Erasmus dated 20 September 1516, More requested that Utopia “be handsomely set off

with the highest recommendations, if possible, from several people, both intellectuals and

distinguished statesment”.442 Erasmus complied with More’s request. Together with Peter

Giles, Erasmus meticulously prepared the production of Utopia, both in seeing it into print

and more importantly in soliciting commendations for the volume. Giles’s active role is

manifest on two fronts: firstly as one of the three interlocutors in Utopia; secondly as a real

historical character who contributed to the Utopian paratexts as well as seeing Utopia into

print. To be precise, in the 1516 edition, Giles’s name was involved in three epistles: one

from Giles to Busleyden, one from Paludanus to Giles, and the first epistle from More to

Giles. Yet unlike Giles, whose name already shows up in the first edition of Utopia—a

result of More “[making] Giles an integral part of his Utopian fiction”443— the 1518 Basel

editions mark the first direct appearance of Erasmus, in this prefatory epistle authored by

himself.

There was a strong bond between Erasmus and Froben; not only were these two

close associates, but Erasmus was godfather to Froben’s son.444 This was not the only

441 McCutcheon (2015) 144. 442 Quoted in Cambridge Utopia (1995) 5. See also McCutcheon (1983) 75n46. 443 McCutcheon (1983) 15. 444 As indicated in the title and the closing sentence of the epistle, “the little son we share in common”. See Cambridge Utopia (1995) 5, 7.

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reason that Erasmus wrote to Froben. Froben’s printing house in Basel was held in superb

regard among humanist intellectuals and Basel was then the leading centre of book

publishing. It was also, as Terence Cave reminds us, “where Erasmus and More’s views on

religious questions and education were widely disseminated”,445 making Basel an excellent

place for the third edition of Utopia. Along with this epistle, Erasmus enclosed More’s

Utopia and his translation of Exercises (Progymnasmata), beseeching Froben to have those

works published under his imprint. To have a book printed and published by this high-

ranking publisher was an alternative endorsement by action, not just in terms of its wider

circulation but also of the commendation that comes with the prestige of the publisher.

This, in Genette’s taxonomy, belongs to the implicit context, a kind of factual paratext that

influences the reception of a work.

Song Meihua is the only translator to include this prefatory epistle. Her

translational preference for a polished literary style is discernible from the outset. The

simple line “As a youth, he toyed with epigrams” is rendered as “他在髫齡之時以寫警句

自娛”.446 Song adopts the idiom “髫齡之時” [tiao ling zhi shi]—the time of childhood—

to signify youth. The origin of 髫齡 comes from 髫齔 [tiao chen], indicating the age when

a child’s teeth begin to fall. This is a poetic phrase whose first documented appearance is in

Records of Grand Historians of Han China, used mostly in poetry and classical literary (wen yen)

script, but rarely in daily conversation or correspondence. For less learned readers this

phrase may not be immediately recognisable. In rendering a simple term, “youth”, as “髫齡

之時”, Song adds a polished layer of classical literary reading, but at the same time

foregoes More’s preferred flavour of simplicity. While it is not my intention to discuss

every single instance of over-translation, this particular case certainly prepares readers for

the style Song’s translation is cast in.

3.2 A NOTE ON BUDÉ ’S EPISTLE TO LUPSET

This lengthy epistle—the longest of the Utopian paratexts—first appeared in the 1517

445 Cave (2012) 3. 446 Song 2. Emphasis added.

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Paris edition. It was written by the foremost French humanist Guillaume Budé (c.1468-

1540), “a humanistic scholar second only to Erasmus in the European world of letters”,447

whom J. H. Hexter praises as “the shrewdest and most perceptive commentator of the

book at its time of publication”.448 Thomas Lupset, though the youngest among all the

humanist scholars who contributed to the prefatory epistles and verses, was involved in the

publication of the 1517 edition of Utopia as well as the printing of the translation of

Galen’s manuscript. 449 This epistle comes immediately after the hexastichon allegedly

written by Hythloday’s nephew Anemolius. Budé’s epistle for Lupset was, accordingly,

placed in a very pivotal position of the volume—the second of all the ancillary items in

this edition—only after Anemolius’s hexastichon. Its content as well as its textual position

both testify to why Erasmus called it an “elegant preface” to Utopia.450

This prefatory epistle begins with Budé thanking Lupset for introducing him to

Utopia, “an extremely amusing and profitable book” (7). This line is a direct reflection on

the original title of Utopia, whose partial subtitle reads A Truly Golden Handbook, No Less

Beneficial than Entertaining, and is perhaps Budé’s intention of highlighting the double focus

of the book. It reinforces the two features that readers should bear in mind during the

process of reading—beneficial and entertaining, or “amusing and profitable”, discussed

previously in the section on serio ludere. The serio-comic nature of the book is designed to

be clear from the very beginning in the 1517 edition (as well as the latter editions that

include this magisterial letter), since a reader’s first impression usually comes from the title

page, making it one of the initial elements that guides readers into the whole narrative that

he or she is about to experience. McCutcheon suggests that readers of the 1516 edition

may not have gotten the jest, thus more red herrings for the jocular aspect—as manifested

in this epistle—are added to the following Paris edition: “It appears that the first edition

had succeeded so well and some of More’s early readers needed more help.”451 Similarly,

commenting on the seriousness or usefulness of Utopia, Allen proposes that readers of the

1516 edition “would not have the help of Budé in determining Utopia’s moral purpose”.452

447 Schoeck (1969) 20. Writing separately but with shared humanist conviction, Budé, Erasmus, and More published their works in 1516: Erasmus’s The Education of a Christian Prince, Budé’s On the Education of the Prince, and More’s Utopia. See Alistair Fox (1993) 8. 448 CW xlviii; quoted in Wooden 157 and Schoeck (1969) 20. See P. Allen 97. 449 P. Allen 97. 450 Quoted in Cambridge Utopia (1995) 7n. 451 McCutcheon (2015) 140-41. 452 P. Allen 101n.

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What is the primary qualification of a happy place? “Happiness” may be the

instinctual answer. Factors constituting happiness are discussed in Utopia, though often

subsumed within Utopia’s political message. Budé already draws reader’s attention to this

aspect in his epistle to Lupset. He thanks Lupset’s generosity for lending him the

translations of Galen’s On Protecting One’s Health. Budé speaks very highly of Galen, the

Greek physician of the second century, considering him the man who “comprehends the

entire science of medicine” and stating that if all his works were translated into Latin, “the

medical profession would then not need to know Greek”.453 To include More’s Utopia as a

“supplement to [this] former gift”, Budé places Utopia and More almost on the same level

as Galen, before he moves on to praise More in explicit terms: “a man of the keenest wit,

the most agreeable temper and the most profound experience in judging human affairs” (9).

All this is to acclaim Utopia; yet there is an often-overlooked point here that I believe

should not be taken as a simple coincidence. More’s Utopia is about the best state of a

commonwealth, but it is also about the well-being of people living in this commonwealth.

It is about the best way to live a good life and about the pursuit of happiness. “All or most

human happiness consists of pleasure” (159), Hythloday comments in the section

discussing Utopians’ moral philosophy. The Utopians divide true pleasures into different

classes, some of the mind and some of the body. “Among the pleasures of the body, they

give the first place to health”, notes Hythloday. Budé’s prefatory epistle and the passages in

Book Two explaining how health is crucial to happiness all reflect this true pleasure of the

body that is the foundation of a good life in the eyes of the Utopians. An implicit link

between Utopia and its endorsement is thus forged tactically here.

Budé further specifies that greed and the accumulation of personal wealth are a

common appetite of and parasite on the whole of humanity, who are under the spell of

private property. There Budé endorses Hythloday’s viewpoints by referring to the

Pythagorean rule of “mutual charity and community property”, which is one of the core

elements of Utopia (13). Following this reference to Pythagoras, who once advocated

communal living, Budé brings up the three divine institutions that the Utopians conform to

dearly so as to maintain the order of Utopia. These three divine institutions are: “equality

of all good and evil things among the citizens (or, if you prefer, full and complete

453 Cambridge Utopia (1995) 7. Towards the end of the epistle, Budé also applauds the translator Thomas Linacre (c.1460-1524) as “that pillar of the British name in all that concerns good learning”

(17). This is an indication of how On Keeping Oneself Healthy – the work that is mentioned in parallel

to Utopia in this epistle – was produced and reproduced/translated by scholars.

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citizenship for all); a fixed and unwavering dedication to peace and tranquillity; and utter

contempt for gold and silver” (13). They sum up what makes a just and felicitous society

possible, what holds up the Utopian order as it were. It serves as a guide to accessing this

Utopian narrative, especially when this epistle is placed prior to the main text of Utopia.

In this epistle, the other name of Utopia—Udepotia—is mentioned, and several

other synonyms of the ideal world are also raised. “Udepotia” was coined from the Greek

oudepote, meaning “never land” (13).454 Marin argues that “the name of the utopian island, in

its turn, is going to be named, inscribed and erased in terms of the displacement of the

letters that compose the name: Outopia, Eutopia, Oudepotia – three names […] where the

permutation of a ‘p’ and a ‘t’ (potia/topia) makes time and space equivalent”.455 This

neologism plays the language game of metathesis here. A No-Where Land that is at the

same time a Never Land—a strong sense of non-existence is revealed with this neologism.

Its first appearance was in the second edition of Utopia (1517). However, its only

appearance in the Mandarin translations to date is in the 2003 Song edition. A sense of

fictionality is evinced by Udepotia; yet it is further accompanied with a more practical

outlook. By mentioning that he hears Utopia is also called Udepotia, Budé imparts a sense

of actuality to the island of Utopia by implying that he is not the only person who is aware

of its existence. A strong mixture of non-actuality and actuality exists in this passage.

Those who refer to it as Udetopia effectively become participants in this game. What is

being invoked with the mention of Udepotia is a tension between the real and the fictional,

a paradox that confirms its existence but at the same time invites readers to question its

ontological status.

This Greek compound coinage, when rendered into Mandarin, loses its double-

sided meaning of Nowhere/Never Land. In her 2003 edition, Song Meihua transliterates

this neologism as “烏地波西亞” [wu di bo xi ya], with a footnote indicating that the

original name is Udepotia.456 However, unlike most other footnotes to More’s coinages in

Song’s edition, it does not provide a definition or an etymological root. This curiously

succinct footnote simultaneously plays down and strengthens the festivus part of Utopia. It

tones it down in the sense that Song translates this epistle that includes the anecdote of an

outsider having the knowledge of this island known as Udepotia, while reinforcing the ruse

454 In some versions of Utopia, Udeoptia is spelt as Oudepotia. Here I adopt the one from the 1995 Cambridge edition. 455 Louis Marin, “The Frontiers of Utopia”, Utopias and the Millenium, ed. Krishan Kumar & Stephen Bann (London: Reaktion Books, 1993) 16. 456 Song 5.

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in the sense that no further information is given on “wu di bo xi ya”, a five-character

transliteration whose first character alone insinuates nothingness and yet whose characters

combined carry no particular substance. Without further explanation, “wu di bo xi ya”

could well pass off as an invented name that often shows up in fiction, especially so

because names are commonly rendered in transliteration.

Varying in degree, a sense of paradox is thus conveyed in both the original and the

Mandarin translation of Udepotia. The level of paradox is further complicated with Budé’s

futile investigation of the location of Utopia:

I have discovered, after investigating the matter, that Utopia lies outside the bounds of the known world. Perhaps it is one of the Fortunate Isles, near neighbour to the Elysian Fields. […] Though it is divided into a number of different cities, they are all united or confederated in a single society named Hagnopolis, a nation content with its own customs and possessions, blessedly innocent, leading a celestial life. (13)457

This passage starts out with a sense of actuality, in Budé’s personal attempt at retrieving the

Utopian island and concluding that it lies outside the known world. Exactly in which realm

is Utopia situated? Is it knowable or unknowable? From here the tension between reality

and fiction is further bolstered. Budé posits that the Utopian island is one of the Fortunate

Isles, even pinpointing it to be close to the Elysian Fields. All these analogies make Utopia

seem real, an actual space locatable in the sea. Elysium—in Sargent’s taxonomy belonging

to the myth of the afterlife—was a “death-free, comfortable retreat for selected heroes in a

place that is neither Olympus nor Hades”,458 that is, a place other than the home of the

gods or the dead souls. This analogy between Utopia and classical locations leads readers

from a sense of locatable authenticity back to the imaginative, a constantly shifting paradox

where, when (early modern) readers feel as if they have reached a final point, they begin to

realise the path to the finality has yet again diverged, leaving them confused as to which

way to take. Nicole Pohl explains that “Medieval and Renaissance maps (mappae mundi)

inserted the speculative geographies of Eden, the Island of the Blessed […] into their

457 In addition, Carlo Ginzburg senses the Lucianic influence behind this passage, and reminds readers that the “description of the Elysian Fields forms the core of the second part of Lucian’s True Histories, a narrative describing a journey into a multitude of strange worlds”. See Ginzburg 15. 458 Frank E. Manuel and Fritzie P. Manuel, Utopian Thought in the Western World (Oxford: Blackwell, 1979) 75.

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navigational charts, destabilising the boundaries of the world”.459 Likewise, Marina Leslie

argues that this “classical reference adds a double temporal location to Utopia as well”.460 It

is as if Budé foresees what his contemporaneous readers might have associated Utopia

with and intends to offer a reference point for them. It is also designed to give a relatively

concrete presence to Utopia by ball-parking its geographical location as somewhere near

the Elysian Fields, or Elysium. Yet how concrete is Elysium, a toponym that belongs to the

myth of the afterlife where heroes spend eternity, a realm unreachable by human touch or

rationality? These toponyms, geographical- or mystery-wise, all contribute to the blurring

of the real and the fictive.

In Song’s edition, this passage is rendered as follows:

According to my own investigation, the geographical location of Utopia lies outside our known world, in one of the Fairy Islands of Penglai, near the Elise Fairy Realm. More said, Hythloday did not tell people where the actual location is. Utopia is divided into many cities, but each is united and collaborated together, forming a whole called the “City of the Holy People”. They are confident in their own customs and the resources that they possess; they are innocent and lead a celestial life.461

The sense of paradox is indisputably still detectable here; what is intriguing is how Song

translates these classical references of the ideal world. The Fortunate Isles become “Fairy

Islands of Penglai”. Penglai is a toponym in Chinese mythology where the Eight Immortals

live and where elixir and immortality are to be found. The more commonly used toponym

for Penglai is Mount Penglai or Fairy Mountain Penglai. Some believe that Mount Penglai is

the current Mount Fuji in Japan, while there are others that claim Penglai to be Formosa,

the name given by the Portuguese to the island of Taiwan in the sixteenth century. The

Elysian Fields, on the other hand, become a compound word that begins with

transliteration and ends in a mythical tone: “Fairy Realm Elise” or “Fairy Bound Elise”.462

459 Nicole Pohl, “Utopianism after More: The Renaissance and Enlightenment”, The Cambridge Companion to Utopian Literature, ed. Gregory Claeys (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010) 53. 460 Leslie 157n. 461 Translation is mine. The original reads: 根據我自己的調查，烏托邦的地理位置在我們已知

的世界之外，在蓬萊仙島其中一座之上，靠近依麗絲仙界的地方。摩爾說，希適婁岱沒

有告訴大家確切的所在。烏托邦分隔成許多城市，但彼此團結合作，構成一個整體，稱

為「聖潔人之城市」，對於自己的習俗和掌握的資源抱持信心，純真無邪，過著天堂般的

日子。See Song 6.

462 “Elise” is a convenient translation that I adopt for Song’s use of “依麗絲” (to render Elysian),

which is pronounced as “Yī Lì Sī”.

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In both cases, the translation of these two classical references has a mythical flavour,

differing in that “the Fortunate Isles” is recast with localisation and “the Elysian Fields”

with foreignisation.463 A footnote is provided for these two terms:

Reverse translation: Fairy Island Penglai (the Fortunate Isles) and Fairy Bound Elise (the Elysian Fields) are both where the souls of heroes and saints go after death in mythical tales. They are symbols of an eternal happy land.464

This footnote briefly explains the two classical references, even though the English and

Mandarin translated names do not necessarily correspond. What is interesting, however, is

that the localisation is even more pronounced here. The direct translation of 樂土 [le tu] is

“happy land” or “happy soil”. As noted above, this term first appeared in the poem “Big

Rat” in the Book of Poetry, the earliest Chinese poetry collection, whose authors were often

anonymous. Zhang Longxi claims this poem is the earliest documented Utopia in Chinese

literature, 465 and Song adopts this term to translate “Eutopia” as it appeared in the

hexastichon allegedly written by Anemolius. The fact that only the 2003 Song edition

includes this epistle is an editorial decision that is complementary to the purpose of the

project, Translating and Annotating Classics, initiated by the National Scientific Council of

Taiwan. In addition to the relative paratextual completeness, Song Meihua’s volume is a

scholarly product, intended to be read with a critical eye. It is intriguing to note Song’s

preference for localisation in her translation and annotation, which complements the

source text via domestic intelligibility but at times may cause confusion because of the

differences in cultural understanding, as demonstrated in her rendering of the Fortunate

Isles.

Another point worthy of our attention in this epistle comes from Budé’s analysis

of greed. After discussing how the greed for accumulating wealth is “a hidden parasite

463 Localising (or domesticating) and foreignising are two common translation strategies. There are also free, literal, dynamic, and formal translations, among others. See Lawrence Venuti, ed. The Translation Studies Readers (London, New York: Routledge, 2000). 464 The original reads: 蓬萊仙島 (the Fortunate Isles) 和依麗絲仙界 (the Elysian Fields) 皆為神

話中英雄和聖賢死後靈魂所居之地，為永恆樂土的象徵。See Song 6. The translation and

the emphasis are mine. 465 Zhang Longxi 181-82. Based on the differences in form and content, I disagree with Zhang’s argument. This poem could at best be taken as an articulation of the pursuit of a blissful land; but it in no way falls into the genre of utopian literature. If we were to broaden the scope and qualification of the articulation of utopia, this poem would also not be first in line for consideration.

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[that] preys on the whole human race” (9), three long passages from the original epistle are

missing in Song’s translation. She states in a footnote that Budé’s epistle is of considerable

length, and that the deleted part is an exposition of Budé’s own arguments that aims at

showing humanist rhetoric and eloquence without having direct relevance to the main

topic.466 However, a close reading of these three long passages indicates otherwise. The

omitted passage discusses how justice, true equity, and gold are perceived subversively in

countries under the prey of this human parasite. In those countries, justice is controlled in

the hands of “exponents of a perverse, confused and unjust justice” (9); for instance, those

who are skilled in finding loopholes in the law, or in contriving fraud and contracts, among

others. Another major point raised in the third omitted passage is that modern law derives

from what is called “the law of nature”, the result of which is that “the stronger a man is

the more goods he should have, and the more goods he has the more authority he should

exercise over his fellow citizens” (11). This creates a vicious cycle, making society a fixed,

unjust hierarchy. This is also the social malady that More, speaking via Hythloday,

condemns in Book One of Utopia. In fact, in analysing Budé’s attack on vice as

complementary to that in Utopia, Wooden suggests that this is an “[emphasis] through

imitation, the sincerest of compliments”. 467 How, then, can these three passages be

dismissed on the grounds of merely being an exposition of Budé’s argument and irrelevant

to the main theme? They contribute to clarifying More’s observations and substantiating

his viewpoints by alluding to Christian ethics. Attributing this excision to cost-cutting or

reducing the number of pages is also not satisfactory, because the translated version of

these three passages would take up no longer than two additional pages. It is not my

intention to look into the grounds for this deletion. We can simply conclude that Song’s

translational intervention has taken a strange turn: her decision to include this epistle

makes available what some would call “a guide to our interpretation of the whole of

Utopia”;468 yet her curious omission of three important passages that she dismisses as “not

too relevant to the main theme” effectively subverts the depth of this guide to our

interpretation. However, this omission can be justified on the grounds of quality. J. C.

Sager comments that, while he does not encourage the kind of omission that often occurs

due to “translators’ negligence, forgetfulness or deliberate avoidance of difficult passages”,

simple omission can in some circumstances improve the quality of a translated product for

466 Song 4. 467 Wooden 158. 468 McCutcheon (1997) 142.

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the reader. 469 Song’s Utopia is aimed at an academic audience, who would indubitably

benefit from the three passages in terms of the depth of the content. Song’s reason for

leaving out the three passages is perhaps best understood as not because they are, as she

calls them, irrelevant, but because they have low priority in Utopia.

3.3 A NOTE ON UTOPIA’S EPIGRAMS

There are four epigrams in the early editions of Utopia: the hexastichon written by

Anemolius, Utopia’s own tetrastichon, and two verses by the Dutch humanists Gerard

Geldenhouwer and Cornelis de Schrijver. In the very first edition, nothing follows the main

text, meaning all four epigrams are placed as preliminary materials. In the second edition

published in 1517, the quatrain written in the Utopian language is removed from the

volume, leaving only three epigrams: the Dutch humanists’ two commendatory verses are

switched to after the main text, as an exit from Utopia. The Utopian tetrastichon is retrieved

in the 1518 edition: like Anemolius’s hexastichon, both are placed in a preliminary position,

while the other two commendatory verses remain as the exit point.

The Utopian tetrastichon is a composite of the Utopian alphabet, a quatrain in the

Utopian language plus its transcription, followed by a literal translation of the verses. All is

attributed to Peter Giles, who claims the authorship in his letter to Busleyden.470 Baker-

Smith likewise suggests that the epigram was composed by “someone intimate with More’s

scheme”.471 It should also be recalled that because all three are printed on one page, they

are often considered one paratextual item. Studies show that the Utopian alphabet has

affinities with Greek and Latin, and is carefully designed so that it has its own inner

consistency.472 McCutcheon even suggests that the evolving formation of the alphabet

from circular to rectangular is a projection of the symmetry of the Utopian island.473 All

this is a reinforcement of the pretended authenticity of Utopia, because the existence of

the island and this Utopian narrative are bolstered by and visualised into alphabets as well

as a map. For early modern European readers living in an era when Amerigo Vespucci’s

expedition had only recently taken place, Utopia was presented and read sometimes as a

469 Sager 33. 470 Cambridge Utopia (1995) 27. 471 Baker-Smith (1991) 116. 472 Cambridge Utopia (1995) 27n. 473 McCutcheon (1997) 139.

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documentation of Raphael Hythloday’s genuine travel account. However, for readers of

the 1517 edition, from which the alphabet and map had been removed, the effect of reality

was inevitably lessened. McCutcheon argues that whether the reduction was due to cost

factors or editorial intervention, the festivus part of the narrative was necessarily thinned out

as a result.474

This Utopian tetrastichon and map were brought back in the 1518 edition, and

have been included in most subsequent editions as well as translations. However, of

Utopia’s fourteen standalone Mandarin editions, only those by Song Meihua and Dai Liuling

include the Utopian tetrastichon in their editions. What needs to be considered is firstly

how and where the tetrastichon is presented in Dai Liuling’s three editions, and secondly

how Song Meihua translates this quatrain. In Dai’s 1956 edition, the Utopian tetrastichon is

situated in the epistle from Erasmus to Ulrich von Hutton.475 To be precise, it is placed

following a passage that illustrates how More has been immersed in classical literature from

a very young age, and is followed by a description of his surpassing intelligence in law and

in theology, in particular how he lectured on St Augustine’s City of God.476 These passages

are not directly involved with the Utopian language; in fact, this epistle is irrelevant to

endorsing or interpreting Utopia in general. The decision to place the Utopian alphabet and

tetrastichon here may have been either a random decision, or a conscious one, inspired by

its indirect association with the discussion of More’s profound knowledge.

In Dai’s second edition of Utopia (1982), this paratextual item is switched to Book

Two, among the portrayal of the Utopians’ mastery of Greek and More’s conjecture that

the Utopian ancestry may have descended from Greece because of their similarity in

languages.477 This time, the textual location of the Utopian quatrain is justifiable, appearing

against the page where the Utopian language (as well as its affinities with Greek and

Persian) is mentioned. This (para)textual arrangement thus serves as a visual aid,

crystallising what could only be imagined into something concrete and material. While the

caption of this tetrastichon reads “Chart of Utopian Alphabets” in Dai’s first two editions,

it is captioned “Quatrain of the Utopian Common Language” in Dai’s third edition (1997).

Without any mention of the quatrain in the caption, the Utopian language may have

474 McCutcheon (1997) 140. 475 This epistle is not among the original paratexts. Appendix One of Dai’s 1956 edition is comprised of Erasmus’s seven letters. This is the last among the seven, numbered 999. See Dai (1956) 132-42. 476 Dai (1956) 136-37. 477 Dai (1982) 81-83. This also explains the foundation of decoding More’s neologism, which often involves Greek compound words.

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remained a mere abstraction for readers of these two Mandarin editions, because they

would not have had the faintest idea that this language is supposed to have been practiced

and materialised into an actual, readable verse. The sense of salutaris—originally intended

to be conveyed via the presentation of Utopian quatrain—is thus diluted. In the third

edition, moreover, this item is inserted among a collection of illustrations and portraits,

most of which do not appear in the original Latin editions.478 Fundamentally, this four-page

collection is to imbue Dai’s third edition with some visual elements and to contextualise

Utopia in the original milieu in which it was first published. However, in all three of Dai

Liuling’s renditions, they—the Utopian alphabet, Utopian tetrastichon with transcription,

and its Latin translation—are reprinted merely as a visual paratext without any further

elucidation. No Mandarin translation is provided for this quatrain, depriving readers of

knowing its practical content and hence of any further critical analysis.

Song Meihua’s edition, on the other hand, includes a facsimile of this ancillary item

and provides a translation on a different page, separated by the epistles by Erasmus and by

Budé. Song places her translation of Anemolius’s hexastichon and the Utopian tetrastichon

side by side, titling them “The Two Commendatory Verses of Utopia”.479 The quatrain

spells out in its first-person perspective that Utopia was built by Utopus from scratch, and

that it is the only philosophical city in the whole world. It is happy to share with the world

what it has, and is also humble enough to accept what is better. This verse is therefore like

a condensed reading guide, pinpointing the spirit of sharing the common good that

perpetuates the whole narrative. Without this four-line translation, Mandarin readers would

have no clue as to what the tetrastichon is about. The meaning of this paratext would have

been reduced—as in Dai’s renditions—to a mere visual presentation, a cluster of signifiers

without the signified.

As for the other three epigrams, none of them are included in the Mandarin

editions except for Song’s. While the two verses by the Dutch humanists are “specifically

addressed to general readers”, all three draw attention to different major features of

Utopia.480 For instance, the concept of the New World is made manifest in the beginning of

Cornelis de Schrijver’s verse when he states that readers are about to read something “from

the world new-found” (257). It is not my intention to undertake a close reading of each

verse; an examination of the parts that bring to the fore the quality of serio ludere (as

478 The 1516 and 1518 maps of the Utopian island, however, are included in this collection. 479 Song 8-9. 480 Astell 304.

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displayed in Anemolius’s hexastichon and the verse by Gerard Geldenhouwer) will be my

approach to reading these epigrams.

The hexastichon allegedly written by the poet laureate Anemolius, Hythloday’s

nephew on his sister’s side, is of particular importance because it is the only place the

alternative name of Utopia—Eutopia—appears. 481 The self-contradiction of the term

‘Utopia’ lies in its double-sided reference: a Eutopia that is at once an Outopia, a good and

happy place that is no place. The very first English translation by Robinson renders the last

line as “My name is Eutopie: A place of felicity”. 482 The authoritative Logan-Adams

Cambridge edition, however, chooses to translate the name literally: “‘The Good Place’

they should call me, with [right] cause” (19). Song Meihua does not opt for the common

translational practice of transliteration with proximity to sound, nor does she render it with

a direction translation that corresponds to Logan-Adams’ version: “好地方”, a good place.

Instead, “樂土”, literally “happy soil”, is how Song renders ‘Eutopia’. As examined

previously, 樂土, one of the earliest utopian articulations in classical Chinese texts, is taken

from a short poem in the Book of Poetry. It is poetic, but at the same time it is also a

straightforward signification of Eutopia. In its own peculiar way, Song’s adoption of this

poetic phrase reflects a direct translation and also infuses this term with a sense of

domestic intelligibility, making the Eutopic connotation distinct. The ‘Eutopic’ side of

Utopia is, regrettably, not available to Mandarin readers of the other editions that exclude

this verse.

While this hexastichon sheds light on the double layering of Utopia via its name,

the commendatory verse by the Dutch humanist Gerard Geldenhouwer (1482-1542) also

explores the double-sidedness, this time via singling out the two features that echo the

book title. The first two lines of the poem read: “If pleasure [dulcia] you seek, good reader,

it’s here; / If profit [utile], no book is more suited to teach” (256-57). The mention of

481 In fact, the alleged authorship also calls attention to the paradoxical nature of Utopia. Thomas More provides a few ‘factual paratexts’, as Genette would call them: that Anemolius is a poet laureate and is Hythloday’s nephew by his sister’s side adds to the authenticity (and endorsement) of Utopia. However, how authentic is a figure whose name means ‘windy’ and whose identity is related to the nonsense peddler Hythloday? Modern readers are informed that the real author of

this verse is untraceable. See Cambridge Utopia (1995) 19n. However, this hexastichon and how it – as well as its authorship – is framed invokes a strong sense of paradoxicality that is discernible almost everywhere in this heavily ironic work. 482 See Sacks 206. The Latin original reads: “Eutopia merito sum vocanda nomine”. See Cambridge Utopia (1995) 18.

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‘pleasure’ and ‘profit’ immediately directs readers back to the book title, which partially

reads “A Truly Golden Handbook, No Less Beneficial than Entertaining”. Again and again,

we find More as well as his humanist coterie ushering readers towards the serious

playfulness—or the jocular practicality—of Utopia, sometimes through direct reference,

sometimes via subtle insinuation. Here the keywords dulcia and utile are the clear signpost

intended to raise readers’ awareness of the multi-layered reading.

3.4 A NOTE ON GILES’S EPISTLE TO BUSLEYDEN

This epistle by Giles was written at the request of Erasmus, 483 serving both as an

endorsement and a suggestion of its paradoxicality. It appears in all four early Latin

editions but is included only in the 2003 Song translation. Peter Giles exalts More’s ability

in making the portrayal of Utopia come alive, and also compares Hythloday to Ulysses,

considering this Portuguese traveller “a man with more knowledge of nations, peoples and

business than even the famous Ulysses” (25). The qualities from both More and Hythloday

make Giles to be “so affected by them that I sometimes seem to be living in Utopia itself ”

(25). It is an endorsement of both the two figures and the book; it further gives a general

sense of Utopia being so vivid that not only does the narrative seem to be a real

documentation but the readers are actually experiencing Utopian life.

This confirmation of authenticity is followed by an anecdote that triggers immense

ambiguity. The location of the Utopian island is not known. It is not because Hythloday

cannot specify it, but because this piece of information is drowned out by someone’s

unfortunate coughing. The whole anecdote is meant to affirm the actuality of Utopia, with

several people being present at the conversation as witnesses. However this actuality is

interrogated with an enquiry regarding its exact location which, in Baker-Smith’s words,

serves as “a parody of the ontological issue raised by Socrates’ ideal city in the Republic”.484

As Louis Marin argues, “If the island’s space is erased by the passage of air, it is perhaps

because it had no other reality than breath itself, the resonance of Raphael’s words, a

resonance such that it is caught and stabilised in a text that, in turn, presents and brings it

483 Erasmus wanted this epistle addressed to Busleyden rather than himself. See McCutcheon (1997) 139. 484 Baker-Smith (1991) 119.

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to light”.485 What has been raised here is the tension between factuality and abstraction, a

retelling of fact that has been made inaudible—hence challenged—via unexpected noise.

The mention of this coughing scene adds an ironic layer to Utopia’s authenticity, without

which the depth of reading is significantly reduced. The fact that only Song translates this

epistle is a sign of the Mandarin editions’ lack of serio ludere, which will become gradually

clearer as we examine the whole paratextual apparatus.

However, there is one important paragraph in this epistle that is obscurely left out

in Song’s translation:

For the rest, I can add nothing to what he has written. Only I did see to it that the book included a quatrain written in the Utopian tongue, which Hythloday showed to me after More had gone away. I’ve prefixed to it the alphabet of the Utopians, and also added to the volume some marginal notes. (27)

This passage comes after Giles’ appraisal of More’s language, judgment, and intelligence. It

is important because here Peter Giles identifies himself as the author of the marginalia and

the Utopian tetrastichon.486 It is not as if Song attempts to hide such information. In fact,

in one of the footnotes in the epistle from More to Giles, Song Meihua states that the

marginal glosses of this epistle and the whole volume of Utopia were putatively added by

Giles. 487 There is no substantiated reason to explain Song’s deletion of this important

passage; I am more inclined to attribute it to a simple oversight. This leads us to another

curious omission in Song’s edition. This time Busleyden is also involved; but instead of

being an addressee, he is the addressor of this epistle.

485 Marin 86. 486 However, Adams points out that the title page of the 1517 edition attributes the marginalia to Erasmus. It is unclear whether the marginal glosses are a collaborative effort or if the 1517 title page is inaccurate. See Cambridge Utopia (1995) 27 and footnote. The Yale Complete Works of St. Thomas More credits both Erasmus and Giles as co-contributors to the marginal glosses. McCutcheon, however, with her lifelong devotion to the study of Utopia, believes that More also played a major role in the marginalia, given how they are “so carefully, albeit deviously, adjusted to the text”. See McCutcheon (1983) 80n. 487 Song 15. It should be noted that the marginalia start with the first epistle from More to Giles (also entitled “Prefatio”); the other prefatory epistles do not contain marginalia.

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3.5 A NOTE ON BUSLEYDEN’S EPISTLE TO MORE

Busleyden’s epistle to More, placed prior to the main text in the 1516 edition, and switched

to succeeding it in the following 1517 and 1518 editions, does not appear in Song Meihua’s

translation, which claims to comply with the original paratexts included in the March 1518

edition. Busleyden (1470-1517), the wealthy patron of northern humanists who had a

grand house in Mechlin 488 and who was “a leading figure in the new mos gallicus of

jurisprudential scholarship”,489 wrote this letter in 1516, at the solicitation of Erasmus.490

Unlike other prefatory epistles that partake in the ambiguous game of authenticity,

Busleyden only sees, or at least only stresses, the salutaris side of Utopia. His letter displays

two functions of Utopian paratexts: that of endorsement and of a reading guide.

Busleyden praises More’s learning and experience, a man not “born for [himself] alone, but

for the whole world” (251), possibly an echo of the debate of whether or not to enter a

king’s council in Book One of Utopia. Allen notes Busleyden’s claim that “we can only save

ourselves from chaos by precisely imitating the Utopian commonwealth”, thus interpreting

Utopia as a blueprint for social reform.491 This Luxembourgish patron of learning refers to

the four cardinal virtues in maintaining ‘a perfect commonwealth’ that he believes are

manifest in Utopia: “What is needed is prudence in the rulers, courage in the military,

temperance in the private citizenry and justice in all”.492 By saying that Utopia is built upon

the four cardinal virtues, Busleyden further praises the communal quality there that makes

“every action and each decision […] aimed solely at upholding one uniform rule of justice,

equality and community solidarity” (253). This forceful endorsement of Busleyden’s is

suggestive of Utopia “[containing] the cure for all the diseases that afflict Europe”, again

treating Utopia as a concrete guidebook to socio-political reform.493 All this highlights the

grave side of Utopia, thus providing a different layer of reading, in the sense that it is a

488 See P. Allen 93. More was so impressed with Busleyden’s house, immense book collection, and musical instruments that he wrote epigrams on these subjects. For more information, see Nan C. Carpenter, “St. Thomas More and Music: Busleiden’s Organ”, Comparative Literature Studies 15.1 (1978): 17-22; and “A Song for All Seasons: Sir Thomas More and Music”, Comparative Literature 33.2 (1981): 113-36. 489 Schoeck (1969) 21. 490 Cambridge Utopia (1995) 251n. 491 P. Allen 106. 492 Adams points out that by referring to the cardinal virtues, Busleyden effectively sums up the argument of Book IV of Republic. See Cambridge Utopia (1995) 253n. For more information on the four cardinal virtues in relation to Utopia, see R. W. Chambers, “The Rational Heathens”, in Twentieth Century Interpretations of Utopia, ed. William Nelson (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1968) 17-32. 493 Wooden 152.

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fixed interpretation unlike most other Utopian paratexts that are permeable enough to

allow the serio ludere quality stand out.

It is not clear as to why Song’s translation includes all but this one paratextual item.

She does not offer an explanation, like she does in the footnote for the three-passage

omission in another epistle. It is also not an irrelevant epistle that deserves to be passed off

lightly, either from its shrewd content or the prominence of both the addressor and

addressee. One possible inference is that this obscure omission is from an oversight, given

the precedent that Song Meihua leaves out one short yet important paragraph in the epistle

from Giles to Busleyden (that discusses the authorship of Utopia’s marginalia and

tetrastichon). The exclusion of this epistle from Song Meihua’s translation deprives one

solemn layer of reading that falls wholly on the serious dimension of Utopia. The result of

this is that, unless they had access to this epistle in other languages, Mandarin readers

would be entirely cut out from a shrewd interpretation offered by a great patron of

Renaissance humanists that sees Utopia’s socio-political excellence being built upon a solid

moral foundation.

3.6 A NOTE ON MORE’S FIRST PREFATORY EPISTLE TO GILES

Among all the original Utopian paratexts, Thomas More contributed two prefatory epistles

to Peter Giles. Whereas the second epistle was only published in the 1517 Latin edition, the

first epistle, entitled “Prefatio”, was included in the first four editions. It is not the longest

among the ancillary items, but its profundity is so grand that Elizabeth McCutcheon

dedicates a book-length study to this epistle,494 and Harry Berger calls it the first of the

“three movements” of a complete work, equating the importance of this particular

paratext to Book One and Book Two of Utopia. 495 In addition to endorsement and

bolstering authenticity, McCutcheon maintains that “More has tailored his prefatory letter

to fit his Utopian fiction”.496 The frequency of this epistle’s inclusion in the Mandarin

editions is telling, especially so when the pertinence of Utopian paratexts has been largely

494 See McCutcheon’s My Dear Peter (1983). McCutcheon justifies her endeavour towards the end of the volume that “to work out the implications of this prefatory letter to Peter Giles with respect to

the larger Utopia – which is paradoxical in so many different ways at once – demands its own book” (68). 495 Berger 61, 71. Quoted in McCutcheon (1983) 10. 496 McCutcheon (1983) 34.

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overlooked in the Mandarin context. More’s first epistle to Giles is not merely an ancillary

item; it is part of the grander whole of Utopia, without which any appreciation is

incomplete.

The material covered in this first epistle from More to Giles is, according to

McCutcheon, “curiously selective”.497 Unlike Budé’s epistle to Lupset that could serve as a

guide to reading Utopia, this “Prefatio”, even though it does not comment on specific

subject matter raised in Utopia, is important in suggesting the standard for translating Utopia

and in getting readers more engaged in the “honest deception” game.498 By recounting how

this account of Utopia was narrated by Hythloday and transcribed by the reportorial More,

the latter comments:

Hence there was no occasion for me to labour over the style, since what he said, being extempore and informal, couldn’t be couched in fancy terms. […] so that my language would be nearer the truth, the closer it approached to his casual simplicity. Truth in fact is the only thing at which I should aim and do aim in writing this book. (31)

This passage appears to have worked as More’s self-defence of the seemingly simple style

that readers are about to read; it is also important on two other fronts. Firstly, it situates the

style of Utopia in the Ciceronian rhetorical tradition, explaining why More opts for a plain

style instead of harkening to his juridical upbringing, which could have easily made the

language more complex and sophisticated. Robert M. Adams notes the three levels of style

in rhetorical theory: the grand, the middle, and the plain, with the latter being most suitable

for philosophical writing.499 By placing Utopia in a larger current of the rhetorical tradition,

it further insinuates a general guideline of translating, or “transplanting”, Utopia into a

different linguistic-cultural soil. Regardless of whether Hythloday was an actual figure that

truly existed, his style of narrating his adventures in Utopia is of “simple, conversational,

everyday prose”;500 and such a style would have matched his verbal account of an everyday

497 McCutcheon (1983) 13. 498 I borrow the phrase “honest deception” from Elizabeth McCutcheon and Alistair Fox, who refers to the former’s study of More’s prefatory epistles as research into “the aesthetics of honest deception”. See Fox 22. 499 Cambridge Utopia (1995) 31n. In the textual introduction to Utopia’s interpretive contexts, Adams also indicates that “More’s book exemplifies the genus humile, the so-called ‘plain’ or ‘Attic’ style”, which reflects what Cicero believes to be characteristic of philosophical discussion. See Cambridge Utopia (1995) xxvi-xxvii. 500 Cambridge Utopia (1989) xxx. Adams, who wrote the “Note on the translation” in this volume, reminds readers that unlike how More’s contemporaneous readers (or most modern readers) understood it, Utopia was not written in elaborate literary language.

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experience. This epistle, appearing in the very first edition of Utopia, makes clear that the

closer the transplanted text was to Hythloday’s “casual simplicity”, the closer it would be to

the truth.

Of the Mandarin editions that include this prefatory epistle, six render truth as 真

實 [zhen shi], a compound word whose two characters both indicate real and true, and one

omits this sentence. Song’s 2003 edition, however, translates it as 忠實呈現 , literally

“faithful (re)presentation”, reflecting the terminology used in translation practice.501 In a

way, we may interpret this as reflecting Song Meihua’s reading of Utopia as a double

translation, from Hythloday’s verbal account to the version documented by the reportorial

More, and then from More’s words into a different language. By rendering “truth” as

“faithful (re)presentation”, Song effectively downplays the elements of lying, to be analysed

shortly. Leaving aside the question of whether the mention of “truth” is a strategic move

to buttress the authenticity of Utopia, this passage puts forward the standard of gauging

this “travelogue” and—possibly—More’ own wish of how his Utopia should be

disseminated, and how the source text should be recast, namely, that the translation should

reflect Hythloday’s original style, that of casual simplicity. Like the reportorial More,

subsequent translators are expected to bear this in mind while transferring Utopia either

verbally or textually.

The “curiously selective” content, on the other hand, brings readers’ attention to

the paradoxicality that is embedded in the whole of Utopia. More begins by dissociating

himself from actually authoring Utopia, claiming himself to be a mere note-taker, a scribe,

and that his hectic schedule in both public and family affairs makes it a wonder that he will

even have time to document Hythloday’s travel account. Keeping up the fiction that this

book is a scribal version of a “real” account, the epistle states that More has sent the

manuscript of Utopia along with this epistle to Giles, beseeching the latter to correct any

possible mistake caused by false memory, especially with regard to a specific number about

which More’s pupil John Clement had raised doubts:502

as I recall matters, Hythloday said the bridge over the Anyder at Amaurot

501 Song 13. 502 John Clement (d.1572) was a distinguished physician who once served as a servant and pupil in More’s household. More writes in this epistle that he “always [wants Clement] to be present at conversations where there’s profit to be gained”. See Cambridge Utopia (1995) 33. The mention of ‘profit’ here suggests the practicality of this conversation and is an implicit reflection of the double appeal of the book as well as its title. The section on serio ludere looks into this concern in detail.

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was five hundred yards long; but my John says that is two hundred yards too much […] If your recollection agrees with his, I’ll yield and confess myself mistaken. But if you don’t recall the point, I’ll follow my memory and keep my present figure. For, as I’ve taken particular pains to avoid having anything false in the book, so, if anything is in doubt, I’d rather say something untrue than tell a lie. In short, I’d rather be honest than clever. (35)

What More does here is to understate his involvement in this narrative, accrediting Utopia

to Hythloday’s recounting of it. He also claims to have endeavoured to present his readers

with the most accurate account, echoing the said assertion that “[t]ruth in fact is the only

thing at which I should aim and do aim in writing this book” (31). This plain fact-check

with concrete figures becomes one of the initial tricks that entraps early modern readers in

a paradox that constantly floats between the two poles of actuality and imagination.

Even if More were to say something untrue, he can attribute it to a memory lapse

or claim that he “is himself deceived or mistaken” by his source, the “nonsense peddler”

Hythloday. What is revealed here can be read on two fronts: the denial of authorship and a

play on authenticity. In various textual spaces inside the volume Utopia, More is dissociated

from authoring Utopia, either by himself or by his humanist coterie. “A paid scribe”, some

say.503 Since More only needs to repeat what he hears from Raphael Hythloday, without

worrying about the style—or the three steps of literary composition 504—any possible

discrepancy can thus be attributed to inaccurate memory. More is accrediting the

authorship to Hythloday alone, in terms of both content and style. This leads us to the

next level: the play of authenticity. Again, this is a game that has been played back and

forth: true and false, actual and make-believe, claiming and disclaiming. Undeniably, readers

will discover some doubtful points in the narrative; if so, those are from false memory,

claims More.

However, is Utopia really a fiction or a documentation of real events that have some

feigned moments caused by hazy memory? Modern readers like us read Utopia as a

Renaissance classic; early modern readers, however, might have taken it either too seriously

or too lightly. At this point in the epistle, More brings in the element of actuality,

requesting Giles to double-check the length of the bridge. All this generates a sense of

503 See, for instance, the epistle from Beatus Rhenanus to Willibald Pirckheimer (which serves as the preface to Epigrammata), printed in Cambridge Utopia (1995) 259. 504 Adams informs us that inventio, dispositio, and elocutio (“finding material, disposing them in the proper order and couching them in the appropriate style”) are the three steps of literary composition treated in classical textbooks of rhetoric. More claims that he does not need to labour over all this because he is merely repeating Raphael’s account. See Cambridge Utopia (1995) 31n.

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cautiousness to the narrative; however, at the same time, another anecdote surfaces. We can

almost hear More having a good laugh behind the scenes, in drafting this epistle. No one

knows exactly in which part of the New World Utopia is located, because no one asks

Hythloday; they only listen. Of those who are informed of Utopia and wish to explore it

themselves, there is one devout theologian who is desperate to go there “to foster and

further the growth of [their] religion” and “to be named bishop to the Utopians” (35). The

timeframe is brought back to the present moment, with a particular theologian who is so

taken in by the Utopian account that he endeavours to go there for a good cause. Adams

refers to a note in the 1624 translation that this theologian could be identified as Rowland

Phillips, Warden of Merton College in Oxford, but he also suggests that this identification

cannot be substantiated and this anecdote could well be a joke played on the reader, as

More enjoys doing throughout Book One of Utopia.505 Whether identifiable or not, readers

have to marvel at More’s rhetorical brilliance in incessantly pushing readers from one side

of the extreme to the other. Having this epistle titled “Prefatio” in the first four Latin

editions gives us a sense of how More has attempted to manoeuvre his contemporaneous

readers and how the trompe l’oeil quality of Utopia is manifest from the very beginning, both

textually and temporally.

3.7 A NOTE ON MORE’S SECOND EPISTLE TO GILES

The second epistle from More to Giles only appeared in 1517, among the four Latin

editions that received More’s authorial sanction.506 While More’s first epistle to Giles is

titled “Prefatio”, this second epistle is labelled “Impendio”, and it appears after the main

text and—as Edward Surtz calls it—“rightly so because it begins with a reader’s reaction to

the finished work”.507 More begins his epistle with a reader’s response to the ambiguity of

Utopia. As if to defend himself, More draws attention to the seemingly innocent trickery of

505 Cambridge Utopia (1995) 35n. 506 It also slipped many early scholars’ attention because this second epistle was not included until recent decades. For instance, Joseph Hirsh Lupton’s Oxford edition of Utopia fails to include this epistle, even though it is claimed that the additions to the 1517 edition “were included in that of 1518, and are reprinted below”. See Lupton, The Utopia of Sir Thomas More: in Latin from the edition of March 1518, and in English from the first edition of Ralph Robynson’s translation in 1551 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1895) lxviii. See Ginzburg 10, 93. 507 Surtz cxcii.

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neologism and, as Edward Surtz observes, “alerts the reader to clues in the text which

disclose the nature of Utopia to be ‘truth under the guise of fiction’”:508

if I had merely given such names to the governor, the river, the city and the island as would indicate to the knowing reader that the island was nowhere, the city a phantom, the river waterless and the governor without a people, it wouldn’t have been hard to do, and would have been far more clever than what I actually did. If the veracity of a historian had not actually required me to do so, I am not so stupid as to have preferred those barbarous and meaningless names of Utopia, Anyder, Amaurot and Ademus. (269)509

More claims that if he had been writing about a commonwealth, he would have added

connotative elements in the name for learned readers to pick up on the insinuation. Yet this

is exactly what More does—he is talking about a commonwealth, and he is using the

“barbarous and meaningless names” which nonetheless skilfully signify a nowhere island, a

phantom-like city, a waterless river, and a people-less governor. More is having fun double-

deceiving his readers; or as Ginzburg observes: “This time he does it [playfully deceiving

his readers] by telling them, through a hypothetical sentence implying something unreal, the

plain truth: not only what he did, but what he meant to do”.510 A sophisticated, subtle joke

is being played here, likely entrapping many unwary readers. Yet if this epistle contributes

immensely to the ironic layering of Utopia that is essential to understanding More’s intent,

why was this epistle included only in the 1517 edition? Allen puts it well when he concludes

that “perhaps it was remembered that jokes lose their savor the more they are explained”.511

Allen’s observation about a sixteenth-century work is, unsurprisingly, not applicable in

Mandarin editions. A practical look into the general phenomenon of Utopia’s Mandarin

paratexts reflects a straightforward reason: that the majority of Mandarin translations do

not include complete original paratexts, hence the exclusion of More’s second epistle seems

inevitably a natural reflection of the editorial intervention.

It is, however, interesting to note its paratextual position as well as the frequency

with which this epistle appears: it is placed immediately after the main text of Utopia and

508 Surtz 322. Quoted in Astell 304. 509 Song translates this passage as follows (132):

我必定會在命名的技巧上大作文章，使得用心的讀者會注意到島名叫「烏

有之邦」，城市名為「無明」，河流意為「無水之流」，君王則是「無民之

君」。這樣做法一點不費力，各詞之意正是此處所否認的「烏有之邦」、

「無明」、「無水之流」和「無民之君」。 510 Ginzburg 10. 511 P. Allen 101.

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only appears once in the early Latin editions. Unlike More’s first epistle to Giles that is

titled “Prefatio” and is placed prior to Book One of Utopia, this second epistle’s “delayed”

appearance is suggestive of More’s desire “to exert some control over our responses to the

work—in marked contrast to the openness of the first edition”. 512 Indeed, if we take

More’s first epistle as a moderate play of authenticity via checking the bridge’s length over a

waterless river, this second epistle is a direct challenge to readers’ interpretation of Utopia,

in particular via its self-contradictory neologisms. How are those Greek compound names

rendered into Mandarin, then? How much is preserved or lost is one key to reading the

translation of Utopia. The only available Mandarin version of this epistle is by Song Meihua,

whose translation of Utopia is more scholarly, literary, and sometimes poetic than the others.

This quality is reflected in these names.

Original Translation Romanisation Literal meaning

Utopia 烏有之邦 wu you zhi bang A nation of nothing /

A nation of nowhere

Anyder 無水之流 wu shui zhi liu A river of no water

Amaurot 無明 wu ming Without brightness

Ademus 無民之君 wu min zhi jun A ruler without people

Corresponding to More’s coinages are Song Meihua’s adaptations of classical idioms into

almost symmetrical phrases that require no further decoding from Mandarin readers. In a

word, they are self-explanatory. All four names begin with either 烏 [wū] or 無 [wú], the

pronunciation of which differs only in intonation (first and second tone). 烏, the same

character as appeared in the book title Utopia 烏托邦, denotes black, dark, or none, among

other meanings. 無, on the other hand, is a straightforward term denoting ‘none’. However,

by being self-explanatory, these corresponding Mandarin names also fail to retain the

512 McCutcheon (1997) 142. It should also be recalled that no paratextual items are appended after the first edition.

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playfully deceptive ambiguity conveyed in Utopia, Anyder, Amaurot, and Ademus. It

should be noted that these names are not rendered as such in the main text of Song’s

version of Utopia. Rather, they are transliterated—烏托邦 [Wu Tuo Bang] as Utopia, 焉你

得河 [Yan ni de he / Yan ni de River] as Anyder, 艾默若 [Ai Mo Ruo] as Amurot, and 亞

戴默士 [ya dai mo shi] as Ademus—all of which are supplied with footnotes explicating

their etymological roots and definition.

Reading the main text alone without explanatory notes, Mandarin-speaking readers

would not have the slightest sense of what is behind the naming construction. These

transliterations would perhaps be mirrored in More’s ironic statement about “barbarous,

meaningless names”. It is only in this passage of the second epistle that the hidden

meanings are revealed directly from the translated names. It is thus evident that while Song

renders only the pronunciation of More’s neologisms in the main text, she translates their

meaning without proximity to sound in the epistle. Why would she not adopt the literal

translation in the main text? Readers would certainly have easier access to each reference.

Perhaps Song Meihua aimed to preserve the foreignness of an early modern text; perhaps

she was aware that providing the same neologism with transliteration and literal translation

in two separate textual spaces allows for a double experience in a text that is so intricate in

its naming design; or perhaps she also remembered that a literal translation of More’s

neologisms would effectively ruin the jest that is so embedded in a narrative whose

eponymous genre is already a self-contradictory paradox.

4 PARATEXTUAL AFTERLIVES: ALLOGRAPHIC PREFACES

“The preface is a unique textual space, one that demands a very particular kind of rhetoric

because of its generic constraints and yet allows ample room for an author’s manipulation

and creativity.”513 Modern prefaces may not possess the same objectives as those from the

early modern period, such as to seek financial help, to compliment a patron, and in Anne

Larsen’s words, “to negotiate a place for the work, and its author, in the public realm”514;

513 Julie A. Eckerle, “Prefacing Texts, Authorizing Authors, and Constructing Selves: The Preface as Autobiographical Space”, Genre and Women’s Life Writing in Early Modern England, eds Michelle M. Dowd and Julie A. Eckerle (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007) 97. 514 Anne Larsen, “‘Un honneste passetems’: Strategies of Legitimation in French Renaissance Women’s Prefaces”, L’Esprit Createur 30.4 (1990): 12. Quoted in Eckerle 97.

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but the fundamental functions hold true: they introduce and endorse the text as well as its

author, providing the basic context for the ease of readers. Often the prefatory authors, in

this case the translators, instil their own voices in the space of “‘pre’ text”,515 making this

textual location an arena where voices other than that of the author emerges. I read each

translator’s preface as a way not just of influencing the actual reader’s reception – namely a

translational intervention – but more importantly, as a way of demonstrating reader

response on the level of translators, whose interpretation and guide ultimately constitute

the lens through which Utopia will be refracted. While some allographic prefaces have been

partially discussed in the publication history of Mandarin Utopias, here I examine them

thematically, with regards to the following questions: 1) whether and how the two narrative

devices, fiction and dialogue, are discussed; 2) whether More’s use of paratexts is

mentioned; 3) which Chinese archetypes of the ideal worlds are adopted to analogise

More’s Utopia.

Allographic prefaces that mention “fiction” or related terms include those of Guo

(1966), Song (2003), Wang (2007), Hu (2007 & 2012), Sun and He (2013), and Li (2016).

Among these, Guo phrases it in a question, asking whether Utopia is an opinion or a

fiction. The other five translators present this term in the context of travel literature, with

Hu Fengfei specifying it as a mystery tale abroad (海外奇譚), therefore highlighting its

obscurity, the ou- feature of Utopia, as well as drawing Utopia closer to, for instance, the

fairy island of Peng Lai that the German missionary Wilhelm Lobscheid defined Utopia

with in the 1860s. That less than half of the Mandarin prefaces bring up fiction is

unexpected; even more surprising is the small number of times dialogue is discussed. Being

the other distinct generic presentation no less, dialogue is referred to in merely three

editions: Song (2003), Sun and He (2013), and Li (2016), with Li Lingyan emphasising that

the dialogue in Utopia is manufactured. The concept of paratext, even less so, is only

brought up in Song Meihua’s edition, in which she refers to as parerga, or附文, literally

“attached texts”.516 Yet the fact that she excludes the Utopian alphabet and maps from this

line of consideration indicates that her understanding of paratexts is strictly limited to

textual items. Dai Liuling does not refer to the specific concept of paratext, though this is

to be expected, given Genette’s study on paratexts did not see its light until 1987 in French

and 1997 in English. Yet Dai’s 1997 edition discusses Utopia’s compositional order and

515 I borrow this portrayal of preface – “pre” text – from Eckerle. See Eckerle 97. 516 Song xv.

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More’s correspondences, both of which are important factors of the paratextual apparatus.

That the compositional order is not commented upon in his earlier two editions (1956,

1982) indicates Dai’s improved understanding of Utopia’s original context. All this suggests

an unfortunate – though not unanticipated – phenomenon, reflected in the scant

discussion of Utopian paratexts in Mandarin to date. A fuller grasp of Utopia is brought to

fruition with the appreciation of paratexts; by contrast the Mandarin Utopias have

regrettably been primarily refracted through a fragmentary lens, a lens without the fringe

that is More’s paratexts.

Since Utopia is a “catch-all label for all forms of ideal society”,517 to understand

how this concept and the work have been transferred into Mandarin requires a look into

the Chinese representations of the ideal realm that may have predisposed certain ideas – or

lenses – through which readers filter their readings of Utopia. The Chinese archetypes most

frequently alluded to are what I call the pastoral counterpart, Peach Blossom Spring, and

Zhuangzi’s Wu He You Zhi Xiang, the first character of which partially constitutes the

rendition of the term utopia into Wu Tuo Bang. Peach Blossom Spring is brought into

comparison in five editions: Liu Lihua’s (1978), Dai Liuling’s latter two editions (1982 and

1997), Wu Lei’s (2005), and Wang Jin’s (2007); this archetype is curiously missing from

Song Meihua’s preface. Song’s allusion to Wu He You Zhi Xiang, Lei Tu (happy soil),

Cockaygne, and Saturnalia reaffirms that her edition is the most comprehensive, especially

so with the paratextual frame that all other Mandarin Utopias fall short of. The lack of

reference to Peach Blossom Spring in her preface, therefore, becomes an unforeseen

omission. Peach Blossom Spring appears in derivative terms in Dai’s two editions: 桃源仙

境 [Tao Yuan Xian Jing] in 1982 and世外桃源 [Shi Wai Tao Yuan] in 1997; Wu Lei, who

modelled his version a great deal on Dai’s translation, likewise adopts Shi Wai Tao Yuan,

literally peach blossom beyond this world. While Dai’s 1982 rendition stresses that this

archetype is a fairy realm [xian jing], his 1997 preface drops the last two characters but

retains the fairy-like element by referring it to as beyond the terrestrial realm, Shi Wai.

Wu He You Zhi Xiang, likewise, appears in five editions: those of Liu Linsheng

(1935), Dai Liuling (1956 & 1982), Liu Chengshao (1957), Song Meihua (2003), and Hu

Fengfei (2007 & 2012). Song adopts the derivation of Wu You Zhi Bang, the last character

of which is the same as bang (topos) in Wu Tuo Bang. The political archetype Da Tong, on

the other hand, is mentioned in two prefaces and one subheading: Liu Lihua (1978) talks

517 Davis (1981) 17.

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about the society of Da Tong in the allographic afterword, whereas in Dai Liuling’s 1997

rendition, Da Tong Shu (instead of the Confucian Da Tong), from the work of the late Qing

intellectual Kang Youwei, is touched upon in passing.518 Da Tong Shu, or The Book of Da

Tong, spells out Kang’s vision of what the great unity entails: overcoming the boundaries of

nations, families, races, and classes, to name just the obvious. One of the most

controversial points is eliminating the system of families, for Kang believed that it was the

only way to be rid of private property. Da Tong Shu does not come up in Dai Liuling’s first

rendition (1956); rather, Da Tong is made explicit in the subheading of the two Books of

Utopia: “Da Tong Heyday” (大同盛世). This phrase, however, is replaced with “Ideal

Heyday” (理想盛世) in Dai’s later two editions.

Rather than a preface, Liu Lihua’s 1978 edition comes with an afterword. While

analogising Utopia with both the Chinese pastoral and political counterparts, Liu brings up

yet another mythical, though much less discussed, representation of the ideal realm, “夢遊

天姥吟” [A Departing Song of Travelling to Tianmu in a Dream] by the Tang poet Li Bai

(701-762).519 Yingzhou, one of the ten continents in Chinese mythology, where fairies and

gods reside, is placed in the beginning of the first stanza. Liu Lihua further highlights that

Yingzhou has long signified the ideal country for the Chinese. Quoting from The Ten Islands

in the Inner Seas, Liu specifies Yingzhou’s geographical location and that the fairy grass and

spring water there are to grant people immortality. 520 Alluding to Li Bai’s poem, and

specifically highlighting Yingzhou, Liu Lihua reads Utopia via a lens of the pastoral, but

even more so this pastoral lens is coloured with a brush of the celestial, where immortality

is presented as a likelihood and a goal. This indicates that, while Liu Lihua does a fine job

in translating Utopia, especially so in brilliantly rendering some of More’s invented names,

her afterword possibly manoeuvres unwary readers into a misconception of Utopia being a

fantasy story, downplaying the importance of human factor in More’s narrative.

518 See “Da Tong Shu”, Chinese Text Project <https://ctext.org/wiki.pl?if=gb&res=306261> 16 June 2017. 519 For the complete poem and its English translation, see “Translation: ‘A Departing Song of Travelling to Tianmu in a Dream’ by Li Bai” <https://eastasiastudent.net/china/classical/li-bai-mengyou-tianmu/> 25 Oct 2018. 520 For more information, see Hainei shizhou ji 海內十洲記 [The Ten Islands in the Inner Seas], 10

Dec 2010 <http://www.chinaknowledge.de/Literature/Novels/haineishizhouji.html> 30 Aug 2018.

“洲” refers to continents; here it is rendered both as continents and/or islands. The Ten

Islands in the Inner Seas is a collection of mystery stories writing by the Taoist master

Dongfan Shuo around the turn of the first century. It is also called 十洲三島記, which

can be directly translated as The Account of the Ten Continents and Three Islands.

https://ctext.org/wiki.pl?if=gb&res=306261

https://eastasiastudent.net/china/classical/li-bai-mengyou-tianmu/


http://www.chinaknowledge.de/Literature/Novels/haineishizhouji.html

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5 VISUAL AFTERLIVES

5.1 BOOK COVERS

Book covers of the Mandarin Utopias started off as plain covers with only the title,

deprived of any visual impact. From Dai Liuling’s 1997 edition onwards, there began to be

some diversity in terms of the cover art. It is no longer just a nearly-blank cover on which

words are printed, but visual elements are introduced to either enhance the book’s

presentation and marketability or to reflect on the content. In Dai’s third edition published

in Taipei, the middle part of the triptych “The Garden of Earthly Delights” by the Dutch

painter Hieronymus Bosch (c.1452-1516) is chosen as the cover, possibly because of its

association with the celestial. From left to right of the triptych are the representations of

Eden, the garden of earthly delights, and Hell. While More’s Utopia is not a religious piece,

this choice of book cover suggests the editor’s generalisation of Utopia, the umbrella term

for an ideal world, to be heaven-like. Song Meihua’s 2003 edition goes in a slightly more

conventional direction, in that the book cover is a reprint of the Utopian map from the

1518 edition. It is, however, the first time that a relevant book cover appeared in Mandarin

Utopias.

Dai Liuling’s book cover (1997) Song Meihua’s book cover (2003)

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Valerie Pellatt points out that it has been a common phenomenon to find a dust jacket that

“in no way reflects the content of the book but is simply sensational and sexy”.521 This

phenomenon of irrelevant sensation is clearly seen in Wu Lei’s and Wang Jin’s translations.

Wu’s 2005 edition distinguishes itself from all other editions in terms of its visual

presentation, and its book cover is the most illustrative, striking readers with its fanciness as

well as delicate expressiveness. The painting used, called “The Baleful Head” (1887), was

created by Sir Edward Burne-Jones (1833-1898), a British artist closely associated with the

pre-Raphaelite movement. This painting depicts a scene in which “Perseus shows

Andromeda the head of Medusa mirroring in the well”. Unlike the other later editions

whose book covers often carry More’s portrait or the map of the Utopian island, this

painting of “The Baleful Head” frustrates a direct association with Utopia. One possible

interpretation is that the reflection from the well is like a mirror image, or as C. S. Lewis

observed, Utopia is located “not in the history of political thought so much as in that of

fiction and satire”; thus, it serves as a “satiric glass to reveal our own avarice by contrast

and is not meant to give us directly practical advice”.522 I do not suppose that the editorial

team who designed the cover art had Lewis’s comment in mind when they opted for this

painting, but the idea of using Utopia as a mirror image is not uncommon; after all, a

literary utopia ultimately aims to present an alternative and to have its intended readers

reflect upon the society they reside in. Another explanation for such a stretched connection

is that this illustration was also used in the epic poem “The Earthly Paradise”, composed in

the 1860s by William Morris, who was noted, among many other achievements, for his

utopian novel News from Nowhere (1890). This novel is indeed of the genre of utopian

socialism, but the content is not quite the same as More’s early modern English Utopia.

This oversimplification of Utopia and utopian literature in the editorial decision regarding

the choice of cover art and the inclusion of a number of un-authorial paratexts could

serve as a clear case study of how the mutability of the book cover alone may have

reshaped and appropriated the Morean Utopia in the Mandarin context.

521 Valerie Pellatt, ed., Text, Extratext, Metatext and Paratext in Translation (Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2013) 3. 522 Bruce Edwards, ed., C. S. Lewis: Life, Works, and Legacy (Westport, CT and London: Praeger, 2007) 148.

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Wu Lei’s book cover (2005) Wang Jin’s book cover (2007)

The cover art on Wang Jin’s edition, on the other hand, is similar to the one appearing on

Wu’s in that neither generates a direct association with Utopia or the image of a blissful

land. It is a painting by Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema (1836-1912), a Belgium-born British

painter who was noted for his illustrations of the sumptuousness of the Roman Empire

and of classical antiquity.523 The reproduction of this painting, called “A Coign of Vantage”

(1895), portrays three Roman women looking on from a high vantage point as their loved

ones return home in galleys. It is rather far-fetched to make any connection between this

illustration and utopian worlds in general, let alone the very specific paradigm of More’s. I

phoned the publishers of both Wu Lei’s and Wang Jin’s translations: whereas People’s Daily

Publishing stated that there is no record to trace it nor is it possible to provide me with

Wu’s contact information, Shaanxi Renmin Publishing commented that the choice of cover

art has less to do with Utopia but with the consistency of the book series. This overview of

Mandarin Utopias’ book covers demonstrates how Utopia is liable to be refracted through a

pictorial lens that, even though not written, carries no less weight than its textual

neighbour, both of which help form a paratranslational angle for reading Utopia.

523 For more information, see the official website dedicated to Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema <http://www.alma-tadema.org> 23 Jan 2015.

http://www.alma-tadema.org/

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5.2 ILLUSTRATIONS

Dai Liuling’s 1997 edition and Wu Lei’s 2005 edition are the only two translations that

create iconic paratexts of their own. Dai’s visual paratexts can be divided into two parts:

the first group is a collection of photographs relevant to Thomas More’s life, such as his

study and the Tower of London, where he was executed, as well as several original

paratexts such as Utopian maps and alphabets; the second group is made up of illustrations

interspersed throughout the main text. There are eleven illustrations, four in Book One and

seven in Book Two. Of the eleven, only one is a reproduction of the original paratexts: a

woodcut of the garden scene depicting the dialogue between Giles, Hythloday, and More

that first appeared in the 1518 edition. This latter group is in conformity with the book

series and publisher: 新潮文庫 is known for its illustrations. A phone conversation with

the editor, Zhang Liqing, merely confirmed that there has not been a second print because

of its low sales, whereas their choice of iconic paratexts—both book cover and

illustrations—is beyond verification.

Left: the fourth page of the collection of illustrations prior to the main text of Utopia (1997).

Right: an illustration portraying the scene in which a man and a woman inspect each other’s bodies

before marriage.

Wu’s 2005 edition, on the other hand, is a case in point in terms of delving into iconic

paratext in a way that over-represents an original work. Wu Lei adds a great many

seemingly irrelevant illustrations, such as a painting from the year 1385 portraying the souls

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of Dante and Virgil in the eighth circle of hell, a painting of a Portuguese ship on the

Japanese sea in the sixteenth century, and a reprint of a nineteenth-century pre-Raphaelite

painting illustrating young women as sexual objects, among many others.

Left and middle: illustrations and synopsis of Book Two of Wu Lei’s Utopia (2005)

Right: the passage on how Utopians are punished, with two illustrations, one of a stone

object on which the scene of a man and a woman flirting is embossed and one of a

painting portraying sexual intercourse in the wilderness.

Despite their obvious irrelevance, all these illustrations and images nonetheless carve out a

potentially unorthodox reading of Utopia. Arbitrary or not, this conspicuous tangentiality

of the iconic paratexts may appear to buff up the volume’s sheer visual impressiveness,

without adding substantial literary value. Indeed, what and how do all those reprints of

images from classical times to the nineteenth century relate to Mandarin readers of Utopia?

How is More’s Utopia presented, or staged, under such a newly-fashioned textual and visual

framing? There is no longer a centrality of meaning nor a centrality of More as we

understand him. The removing, adding, and shifting of textual as well as visual

components in Utopia engenders multiple lenses through which Utopia is refracted, urging

readers to question the issues not just of translation but of authorship; or rather, how

strong a role the translator plays as a mediator. It is in this sense that whether Utopia is read

paratextually renders different results—that each version of Utopia invites readers to

challenge the transferability of the Morean canon into an utterly varied cultural context. It

may frustrate the need to fix in place a final meaning, but it encourages readers to take on

an active role as co-author of this Morean heritage.

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There is yet another intriguing presentation in Wu Lei’s rendition. While one of the

major factors for the authorial paratexts was to buttress the illusion of authenticity of

Utopia, such an issue with authenticity no longer exists in modern times. Yet there emerges

a new dimension of authenticity with this fancy edition of Wu Lei’s. The volume ends with

a lengthy epistle from Erasmus to Ulrich von Hutten (1488-1523), in which a detailed

biographical sketch of More is provided. Like the previous pages, this epistle is presented

with several illustrations, the last of which is of particular interest here:

The caption reads that it is a facsimile reprint of the Latin manuscript of Utopia. Yet the

earliest evidential documentation known to be extant is the 1516 printed volume; the

manuscript itself has not survived.524 This specific case makes us question not just the

editorial intervention, but the issue, or criteria, of authenticity—has the translator or editor

tried to make this edition appear “higher”, “nobler”, or more sophisticated, by falsely

introducing an image that claims to be of the Latin manuscript? With a text whose nature is

so protean and whose meanings travel back and forth in each edition across linguistic as

well as cultural boundaries, it begs the question of whether an authentic reading actually

exists. Multiple layers of reading may suggest that there is a true or truer meaning, whereas

524 Cambridge Utopia (1989) xxx.

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other layers are waiting to be purged. However, a polysemic text like Utopia invalidates such

a definitional limitation; there is no finalisation of one certain reading. Through the

multiple lenses that are result of the shifting of paratexts, a reading multiplies itself.


Thus the appended material shares in the deliberate ambiguity of Utopia itself; it draws out, expands, and illustrates Utopia’s double, humanistic purpose of delightful instruction and by doing so teaches the reader both to enjoy the fiction and to understand its basic didactic purpose.525

The intricacies of translating Utopia lie not just in its language, but in its levels of ironic

reversal. These are most clearly manifested in the authorial paratexts that encased the four

early Latin editions (1516-1518). As far as authorial paratexts are concerned, except for

Song’s edition, the Mandarin translations have generally under-represented the pivotal

relevance of authorial paratexts in contributing to the multi-layered interpretational

potential of Utopia. More’s first epistle to Giles, perhaps because it was originally entitled

“Prefatio”, has been the most frequently included authorial paratext, appearing eight times,

except in the three early editions ranging between the 1930s to the 1960s, and in 2005, 2011,

2016. Following that, the Utopian map has been reprinted in five editions (1956, 1982,

1997, 2003, 2005),526 and the Utopian alphabet plus tetrastichon in four (1956, 1982, 1997,

2003). As for the other authorial paratexts included in the 1518 Basel editions, they are only

found in Song Meihua’s 2003 translation. Therefore, Song’s publication marks a new stage

in the reading of Utopia, as it is the first time since the 1930s that the importance of the

Utopian paratexts is called to Mandarin readers’ attention, as demonstrated by the inclusion

of the authorial paratexts as well as Song’s critical introduction to the volume. However,

Song’s rendition, while scrupulous in so many ways, leaves out the epistle from Busleyden

to More, the passage in which Giles claims to have contributed the marginalia, and the

525 P. Allen 101. 526 It should be noted that only the 1997 and 2003 editions contain both the 1516 map (figura) and the 1518 map (tabula).

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Utopian quatrain, 527 creating a curious turn in her effort to produce a faithful

representation of More’ Latin Utopia.

This chapter then looked into allographic prefaces thematically: whether and how

fiction, dialogue, paratext, and Chinese archetypes of utopian worlds are brought into

discussion. Examining whether fiction, dialogue, and paratext are delineated (or not) in the

allographic prefaces has enabled me to understand each translator’s approach to the text,

whose interpretation becomes the lens through which readers experience Utopia. The

meagre appearance of these three factors, especially paratexts, which only appear in one

edition, suggests that these are overall plain interpretations of Utopia, therefore insinuating

a possible direction for future work. Moreover, the frequency with which Peach Blossom

Spring and Wu He You Zhi Xiang have been adopted and appropriated reaffirms how these

two tropes have become “part of contemporary cultural memory”, 528 which often

predisposes readers towards a certain image of an ideal world before their real exposure to

More’s Utopia.

I would like to return to one of the major concerns of this project: the relation

between translation and paratext. While Genette does not stress translation in his seminal

study on paratexts, his taxonomy of the five paratextual features has offered a valuable

application for the reading of Utopia, especially so when Utopia’s manuscript, early editions,

and the many translations that followed have presented much varied volumes. The five

paratextual characteristics Genette raised, as discussed in Introduction, have been applied

in all the discussions of Mandarin Utopias. With the two most fundamental distinctions –

spatial and temporal – I focus on peritexts that are either anthumous or posthumous. With

the substantial status, I analyse both textual and iconic paratexts, the latter including book

cover and illustrations that have sometimes taken acute readers by surprise with their

marginal relevance to Utopia — and in one particular case in a 2005 edition, the

substantially added illustrations have made the volume an adapted work loaded with the

translator’s own creative interpretation. With pragmatic dimension, authorial and

allographic paratexts have been investigated, and there is one intimate paratext (1957) that

is better understood alongside with the translator’s appropriation of the source text — a

passage on love and creation. The functional dimension of paratexts, on the other hand,

527 Song also deletes three long passages from Budé’s letter. This was a conscious decision, however, as stated in the footnote. 528 Douwe Fokkema, Perfect Worlds: Utopian Fiction in China and the West (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2011) 6.

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manifests itself throughout the dissertation, not just with paratexts but also with

translations. That paratexts are “dedicated to the service of something other than itself ”529

singles out the irreplaceability of paratexts — whose mode of existence could be footnotes

and allographic prefaces, among others, which might or might not lead to twisting of

More’s intentions. For instance, equating Utopia with the Tang poet Li Bai’s “Departing

Song of Travelling to Tianmu in a Dream” has effectively, though erroneously, painted a

utopia informed by the idea of progress with a brush of the celestial and pastoral. Yet

another raison d’être of paratexts that is specific to Utopia is that they are what reinforced

the ambiguity and the serio-jucolarity of More’s text. If the equivalence of effect is to be

reproduced, it is this conflation of seriousness and playfulness that needs to be re-created,

which cannot be achieved without the inclusion of authorial paratexts. In Utopia, the

concern with fidelity to linguistic and semantic units is diluted; it is not language that

complicates but, as previously discussed, “matters of attitude” that are highlighted,530 and

such matters of attitude are the ironic reversal built upon language, word play, and the re-

packaging of paratexts.

529 Genette 12. 530 Cambridge Utopia (1989) xxxi.

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CONCLUSION: UTOPIA’S RECENT AFTERLIVES

At the beginning of this dissertation, I briefly discussed my work placement at Casa da

Música, along with the Utopia500 programme. All the commenmorations prove that

utopian thoughts have not ceased to be productive and far-reaching, as exhibited through

large-scale movements of resistence to local projects of social inclusion that I have

experienced in my cooperation with Casa da Música. Recognising the ubiquity of the

utopian impulse, the concluding phase of this Utopian voyage travels into the present,

perusing Utopia’s recent afterlives as manifested in titles and theses, as well as dissertations,

published in China and Taiwan in the years 2016-2018 with the words “utopia”, or “wu tuo

bang”, appearing in book titles or synopses, aiming to see how far and wide the concept of

utopia has traversed. Since any articulation of a particular ideal can be considered “utopian”

in its own right, it is not my intention to take into account all the titles that border on the

expression of or the desire for an ideal.531 I limit the scope of my investigation to books,

MA theses, and PhD dissertations with the word “utopia” [wu tuo bang] appearing either in

the title or in the abstract, or under subject headings in library catalogues and databases.532

While the target groups are all displayed in textual form, I categorise the MA theses and

PhD dissertations as strictly academic afterlives. Books, on the other hand, are to be

generalised as textual afterlives, especially so when some titles under discussions are

intended for general readership. This means that they do not necessarily contain any

allusions to or comments on More’s Utopia; the focus here is on how this “term of

common parlance” has taken on a life of its own and has been utilised to various ends. 533

531 For instance, there were 43,489 books (with ISBNs) published in Taiwan alone in 2016. While I do not dismiss the possibility of surveying all the titles that possessed a utopian inclination, I consider it more effective to examine Utopia’s textual afterlives solely in works that explicitly

contain the term in English (or the three characters 烏托邦 [wu tuo bang], in the case of Mandarin

Chinese). 532 I exclude the translations (irrespective of whether they are reissues or new ones) of utopian and dystopian classics such as Nineteen Eighty-Four, We, and Brave New World, as well as translations of critiques such as Karl Mannheim’s Ideology and Utopia, among others. I also exclude essay collections from symposia and conferences. Therefore, those titles that do not fall into these excluded groups offer a brief overview of thematic categories and demonstrate how the idea of utopia is maintaining its textual legacy. 533 In explaining the etymological root, Davis comments that utopia “is a word which, overcoming its Latinized-Greek origins, has taken on a life of its own. Versions of it exist in all major languages.

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1. TEXTUAL AFTERLIVES

Cross-referencing various databases and library catalogues renders a simple result: since

2016, twenty-two books on this subject have been published in China, and six books have

been published in Taiwan.534 To begin with the list from Taiwan, the first book located is

about the dislocation of Tibetans and their search for a free Tibet. Written by Yin Wenhui,

謎途：流亡路上的烏托邦 (Puzzling Routes: The Utopia on the Way of Exile)535 implicitly

conveys loaded sentiments to which only exiled Tibetans can relate. The second was

published in June 2016, entitled 自由文化地球國 (Freedom, Culture, Earth, Nation).536 The

author, Zeng Guomin, attempts to express his ideals by resorting to philosophical theories

and the socioeconomic system, arriving at his ultimate aspirations: a republic of free culture,

a free culture area, a passion-based economy, and a global republic of free culture. While

these two books focus on the present and the future, the third, authored by He Guoqing,

looks back to the past. Challenging the common view that the Emperor Wanli of the Ming

dynasty caused China to experience a “dark age”, He Guoqing offers a different historical

standpoint by illustrating how the cultural pinnacle of Ming China was comparable to the

Renaissance for the sixteenth-century European missionaries who set foot in China.537

Thus, these three utopia-related titles published in Taiwan between 2016 and the first half

of 2017 can be viewed as their authors’ utopian visions, factual or otherwise, ranging from

the past to the future. The second half of 2017 saw the publication of two books adopting

“utopia” as part of their titles: A Utopian Artist: Illustration Portfolio of Ko Hungto,538 and Whose

It has become a term of common parlance, its linguistic complexity lost to most of its users.” See Davis (2010) 29. 534 The primary library sources are the National Central Library in Taiwan and the National Library of China. The Hong Kong Academic Library Link has provided immense help in locating these resources, including access to journal articles and newspaper articles published in China and Taiwan. 535 Yin Wenhui尹雯慧, Mi tu: Liu wang lu shang de wu tuo bang 謎途：流亡路上的烏托邦 [Puzzling

Routes: The Utopia on the Way of Exile] (Taipei: Tai wan tu bo zhi you hui, 2016). 536 Zeng Guomin 曾國民, Zi you wen hua di qiu guo 自由文化地球國 [The Earth Nation of Free

Culture] (Taipei: Lie hai ren, 2016). The translation is mine, and I adopt a literal translation. Instead of being in the title, the word “utopia” appears in both the abstract and as a keyword during the catalogue search. 537 He Guoqing 何國慶, Wan li jia dao: Duo yuan kai fang chuang yi de wen hua sheng shi 萬曆駕到：多

元·開放·創意的文化盛世 [The Royal Arrival of Emperor Wanli: The Cultural Heyday of the

Dynamic, the Receptive, and the Creative] (Taipei: Yuanliu, 2016). 538 Ko Hungto 柯鴻圖, Wu tuo bang de yixiangjia: Ko Hongtu huihua zuopinji 烏托邦的藝想家：柯鴻

圖繪畫作品集 [A Utopian Artist: Illustration Portfolio of Ko Hungto] (Taipei: Daji wenhua, 2017).

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Utopia? Reflections and Dialectics in 500 Years.539 As is evident from the title, Ko Hungto’s

volume is a collection of his watercolour paintings, primarily of nature and plants. Known

as the Utopian Artist, Ko is concerned with delivering a sense of tranquillity and aesthetics

through his works. The fact that he is credited as a Utopian Artist reflects how utopia is

being appropriated in a modern context – that of the pursuit of undisturbed tranquillity

and harmony. Whose Utopia?, on the other hand, is an homage to the publication of Utopia,

coordinated by the National Normal Taiwan University and Hong Kong Baptist University,

and covers a wide range of themes including human rights, Taiwan nativist literature, and

the labour movement, to name just a few. Only one book that incorporates the term

“utopia” into its title was published in Taiwan in 2018: Utopia, Dystopia, Heterotopia: Selected

Essays of Chan Koonchung. 540 Chan is a Hong Kong intellectual, who has published

extensively on politics and social observation. This collection of essays includes his

critiques and reflections since the 1980s on the tension between China, Hong Kong and

Tibet, as well as on the current situation with regard to technology and the economy.

Chan’s 2018 work was understandably not published in China; only one title

adopting the term wu tuo bang saw the light there in 2018: a critical study of Theodor

Adorno’s aesthetic theory and Marxism.541 The other twenty-one titles published in China

before 2018 cover a wider range of disciplines. The first two, published in 2016, deal with

the utopian spirit of ethical values and the critique of a writer considered to be utopian.542

The other nineteen books touch upon the topics of utopianism, utopian novels, Marxism,

the nostalgia for homelands, aesthetics, gender issues, and travel. There are overlaps and

the two most frequently covered topics are utopianism and critiques of authors or their

539 Chen Dengwu, Wu Youneng 陳登武, 吳有能, eds, Shui de Wu tuo bang? 500 nian lai de fansi yu

bianzheng誰的烏托邦? 500年來的反思與辯證 [Whose Utopia? Reflections and Dialectics in 500

Years] (Taipei: Shida chuban zhongxin, 2017). 540 Chan Koonchung 陳冠中, Wu tuo bang, er tuo bang, yi tuo bang: Chan Koonchung shidai wenpingji 烏托

邦、惡托邦、異托邦 : 陳冠中時代文評集 [Utopia, Dystopia, Heterotopia: Selected Essays of Chan

Koonchung] (Taipei: Maitian chuban, 2018). 541 Xie Changfei 谢昌飞, Xiandaixing pipan de shenmei changyu yu wutuobang de zhongjian现代性批判的

审美场域与乌托邦的重建 [The Aesthetic Field of the Critique of Modernity and the Reconstruction of

Utopia] (Beijing: People’s Publishing House, 2018). 542 The first, titled 乌托邦精神的伦理价值 (The Ethical Values of Utopian Spirits), was the outcome

of a project called “Chinese Traditional Utopian Thinking and Its Archival Research”, funded by Huaqiao University in 2016. The second book looks into Andrei Platonov’s writing during the 1920s and 1930s, focusing on the artistic expression of utopianism and the pursuit of individual survival..

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works. 543 These titles suggest a relatively serious or audience-specific appropriation of

Utopia.544 Among the twenty-two titles, three are directed toward a general readership: one

is travel-related while the other two are works of fiction. Instead of an uninterrupted

narrative, the former is composed of multiple entries suggesting tourist attractions as well

as offering advice almost exclusively to locals only. The book is entitled 跨国界乌托邦：

理工男 100天环游北美 (Crossing-Boundary Utopia: A Polytechnic Boy’s 100 Days Around North

America).545 For informed readers, the extent to which the concept of utopia is appropriated

here may appear to be far-fetched. However, instead of viewing it as an unexamined

misappropriation, Cross-Boundary Utopia finely exemplifies J. C. Davis’s assertion that utopia

“has taken on a life of its own”,546 for it has truly traversed beyond the range of common

parlance and expanded into general readership.547

In Taiwan, discussions spinning off from the sixteenth-century neologism are

numerous, primarily in science fiction, and the art- and entertainment-related industries,

whereas More’s Utopia has not received due investigation. Even in the collection of essays

commemorating the quincentenary of Utopia (co-published by Taiwan Normal University

and Hong Kong Baptist University), the articles are on diverse sub-themes, ranging from

543 Such authors include Lianke Yan (b.1958), a professor of literature who is known for his highly satirical works; David Harvey (b.1935); the Chinese Jew Klara Blum (1904–1971); and Kenji Miyazawa (1896–1933), a noted Japanese writer of children’s literature and a social activist. 544 For instance, Wang Jie’s work 寻找乌托邦：现代美学的危机与重建 (Searching for Utopia:

Crisis and Reconstruction of Modern Aesthetics) reflects Wang’s critique of modern aesthetics and

anthropology. On the other hand, Zhang Kongzhi’s 总体性与乌托邦：人本主义马克思主义的

总体范畴 (Totality and Utopia: A Perspective on Humanitarian Marxism) is explicitly meant for a

readership with pre-existing knowledge of Marxism. This translation is provided in the entry found from the library catalogue search. 545 Jiang Yu 蒋瑜, Kua guo jie wu tuo bang: Li gong nan 100 tian huan you bei mei 跨国界乌托邦：理工

男 100 天环游北美 [Crossing-Boundary Utopia: A Polytechnic Boy’s 100 Days Around North

America] (Beijing: Zhong guo ren min da xue chu ban she, 2016). 546 Davis (2010) 29. 547 I should add that, in addition to the books, the filtered search results also listed six translated works published in China (which include “utopia” in their title or abstract) and four in Taiwan since the beginning of 2016. The six published in China have varied subjects: the entertainment industry, well-being and government, utopian socialism, human rights, a drawing book based on science-fiction style, and a memoir about the war on Chinese Americans. The four translated works published in Taiwan cover the themes of architecture and city planning, social structure and technological advancement, philosophy and the pursuit of freedom, and a drawing book titled Birtopia. It is interesting to see that in both China and Taiwan, so-called light reading matter (drawing books and colouring books) with titles containing the term “utopia” are being published, thus indicating manifold levels of appropriation. I should also add another translated work that did not appear in the library catalogue search. It is a graphic novel adaptation of X-Men, authored by Brian Michael Bendis, illustrated by Muamud Asrar, and translated by Red-Shielded Chief Chris (pseud.). This graphic novel is titled All New X-Men: The Utopians, a translation of which was published in China in 2017.

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Taoist worship to anarchist movements, but none of them are about More’s Utopia. This is

not to devalue the academic debates around utopia conducted in Taiwan, but it reflects that

the study of Utopia itself is wanting. In contrast to this, a series of articles were published

between 2016 and 2018 on Utopia in China. What is more interesting is that wu tuo bang has

often been adopted and quoted in various discourses, particularly of the political kind, to

such an extent that it reeks of ideological exploitation. Articles by Gao Fang, an emeritus

professor of the first university founded by the Chinese Communist Party, demonstrate an

ideologically-oriented application of More’s text, leaving aside the direct references to

Utopia in several of Xi Jinping’s speeches. This phenomenon perhaps best illustrates why

the most recent three Mandarin Utopias were published in China, where it appears to cater

to a purpose other than a literary one.

2. ACADEMIC AFTERLIVES

The academic afterlives of Utopia, likewise, demonstrate a variety of possibilities expanding

from the initial neologism and concept. The National Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations

in Taiwan lists eleven publications: two PhD Dissertations and nine MA theses published

between 2016 and 2018.548 As with book titles that include the keyword “utopia”, or wu tuo

bang, the majority of the theses are not about literary utopias; most of them appropriate the

term to indicate the ideal realm for a specific field of research. Both the PhD dissertations

were completed in 2017: while Chang Tien-Tai analyses Ernst Bloch’s The Spirit of Utopia

and its application to education, Wu Hui-Ching uses the term “utopia” in her thesis title to

delineate her ideal healthcare system in the light of community policies and the capitation

system. Four out of the nine MA theses study utopian or dystopian narratives, indicating a

growing recognition of this literary genre.549 However, none of the discussions of literary

utopias touch on a Taiwanese work.

548 The National Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations in Taiwan, or 臺灣博碩士論文加值

系統, is an open access repository where one can locate both the Chinese and English abstracts of the theses. However, access to the full text is limited to affiliated institutions only. I will provide the links to the abstracts of each thesis in the bibliography. All English titles are directly taken from the database, regardless of grammatical incoherence. 549 Jiang Meng-Syuan discusses the issue of freedom in Nineteen Eighty-Four and Fahrenheit 451; Liang Siang-Yun canvasses the utopian disillusion and recreation in Matched, a dystopian trilogy where youngsters are assigned a future partner at the age of 17; Liao Pei-Wun focuses on space in The Handmaid’s Tale, arguing how the use of space is central to shaping this dystopian society and

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The other MA theses appropriating the term utopia include a study of the political

poetics of the late Qing statesman Zheng Xiao-Xu; an environmental approach to a

coexistence shared by humans and pets; an exploration of the interplay between religion,

money, and living desires through the means of digital photography; a narrative criticism of

the Taiwanese rock band Mayday’s utopian view as expressed in the documentary Live in

Live; and a thesis whose English title is simply rendered as “Wooltopia” that applies wool

as the main means of the author’s creative outlet, which centres around imagination,

contradiction, and time. The application of the concept of utopia to the art industry is clear

in this overview.

Contrary to my expectations, there was only one PhD dissertation produced in

China during the time frame of my research. It is a study of the utopian quest in Herman

Melville’s Polynesian trilogy. As for the fourteen Chinese MA theses, unlike those in

Taiwan that tended to appropriate utopia, these can be divided into two categories: those

on literary utopias and those on utopian thought. As far as literary utopias are concerned,

Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, William Styron’s Darkness Visible, Doris Lessing’s anti-

utopian narratives, Shakespeare’s comedies, and More’s Utopia are the topics of interest.

Those about utopian thought can be categorised into two sub-groups: one concentrates on

a particular thinker’s thought while the other analyses specific utopian phenomena. Of the

former, Ernst Bloch and Frederic Jameson are each studied twice. The second sub-group

covers utopian construction theory, the harmony of the occident and the orient, and the

utopian spirit in modern Chinese literature. This reflects Gao Fang’s observation, as

discussed in the Introduction, that there is a lack of MA theses and PhD dissertations on

Utopia, especially from a socialist angle. The only thesis on More’s Utopia looks at its

cultural origins.

In this overview of the MA and PhD works published in China and Taiwan, two

interesting phenomena are observed: while the total number of theses and dissertations

does not show a drastic difference (eleven in Taiwan compared to fifteen in China), if we

take into account the population that receives higher education across the Taiwan Strait,

the construct of utopia is more frequently applied in Taiwan. However, this overview

indicates that wu tuo bang is largely appropriated in Taiwan, whereas those studies from

China stay closely within the lines of literary and philosophical research.

simultaneously serves as a key to survival; while Yao Teng-Jie investigates the presentation of utopia in From the New World, a Japanese science-fiction novel by Yusuke Kishi.

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3. ARTISTIC AFTERLIVES

So far, a brief overview of the titles containing wu tuo bang has been provided. I will take a

short detour here to reflect on another level of utopia’s recent afterlives in the art and

entertainment industry. A pop song titled “Utopia” was released by a Taiwanese singer,

Hebe Tien,550 and a large-scale concert tour called “Utopia 2.0” by another Taiwanese

singer, A-Mei, has toured from December 2016 to December 2017.551 Another song called

夢托邦, literally “Dream-topia”, was released in February 2019 with “Utopia” as its official

English rendering. It is a love song, whose lyrics indicate that there is a utopia set in the

future where love will be realised. This appropriation of the term has yet again reaffirmed

“utopia”’s status as “common parlance”: in many circumstances it no longer carries the

political connotation found in More’s Utopia, but new takes with multifaceted meanings

have been built upon and adapted to this sixteenth-century neologism.

Besides the music industry, results from the Hong Kong Academic Library Link

indicate two film holdings that were released in 2017 in Hong Kong. One is a Japanese sci-

fi film called 和諧, or Harmony, satirising a Utopia built in the name of defying chaos but

actually based upon a grand hypocrisy. The other is titled 同流合烏, officially rendered as

Utopians. A play on words is exhibited in this title. It originates from the idiomatic phrase

同流合污, which signifies the act of wallowing in a mire with someone.552 However, the

last character found in the film title, 烏 , is an intentional typo, an adaptation of the

Mandarin rendition of Utopia, 烏托邦. The pejorative denotation and wordplay in the title

embody a deliberate move on the part of the director, daring readers to search for their

own utopia, their own truth. The film depicts the protagonist’s quest for truth, for art, and

for his sexuality. He is caught up in a mire in which he is tangled up with his girlfriend and

his Socratic mentor. The themes of homosexuality and polygamy that run throughout the

film have stirred some controversy (and the main actor’s contract with a sports

development foundation was terminated right after the release of the film, allegedly

550 The recording of Hebe Tien’s concert, If Only, released in 2016, appeared in the catalogue search because the song “Utopia” was in the program. 551 In addition to appearing in Taiwan, this “Utopia 2.0” concert tour reached China, Malaysia, England, Italy, Singapore, and Spain. 552 A literal reading of this idiomatic phrase would be “being in the same stream and in the same dirt”—which should help readers grasp the underlying meaning.

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because of the government’s disapproval).553 While no utopia-related video productions

have been released in Taiwan, there was a documentary on Taiwan’s human geography in

2016. Titled Postcards from Formosa, the three-disc documentary contains a section called

“The Last Utopia: The Ivalino Tribe and the Traditional Underground Houses on Orchid

Island”. Adopting “utopia” into its English subtitle, it reveals a bitter yearning for the long-

lost time when aborigines were able to enjoy their land without modern intervention, a

utopian vision of theirs that journeys back in time.

This detour has shown that the appropriations, or, rather, the formal variations, of

Utopia are not strictly textual. This dissertation has looked into the recent afterlives of

Utopia in multifarious respects, reflecting upon how this idea has been appropriated, as

well as how its life span has been prolonged and how it has flourished in dynamic fashion.

The appropriation of utopia has travelled everywhere: from relatively abstruse

philosophical works to critiques of aesthetics, from fictional narratives to such “light” texts

as drawing books. It also manifests itself in artistic events, video recordings, and many

more non-print media objects, which deserve essay-length discussions in their own right.

All this attests to what Fátima Vieira concludes in her review of French publications on

Utopia, that “More’s legacy seems, in fact, to be more visible at the instrumental level:

utopia as a tool for critically analysing society and for creatively imagining alternatives”.554

4. CONCEPTUAL AFTERLIVES

Utopia as a concept and as a spirit striving for betterness reincarnates itself. It is applicable

to various contexts, political and otherwise; it finds itself being appropriated in different

discourses, academic and elsewhere. The Lennon Wall in Prague was initially an outlet for

the Czechs to articulate their irritation toward the then Communist regime in the 1980s,

and has since become a landmark for the expression of freedom, liberty, and democracy. A

Lennon Wall covered with thousands of post-it notes against the totalitarian intervention

emerged in Hong Kong following their anti-extradition bill protests in 2019. An editorial

piece commenting on Hong Kongers’ ongoing demonstration entitled a sub-section as

553 See Ke Zhiyuan柯志遠, “‘Tong liu he wu’: Yun xiang, xing ai yi ti de ku hang seng”《同流合

烏》雲翔，性愛議題的苦行僧 [“Utopias”: Yunxiang, the Ascetics of the Sexual Issues], Now

News 01 Aug 2016 <https://www.nownews.com/news/20160801/2188585> 16 July 2017. 554 Fátima Vieira, “Utopia as a Tool for Change: A Review of Publications on Utopia in France (2016 and the First Semester of 2017)”, Utopian Studies 28.3 (2017): 633.

https://www.nownews.com/news/20160801/2188585

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“From Utopia to the War Zone” to illustrate the situations in which the Hong Kongers

find themselves.555 Economic prosperity was their utopia; it is now a dystopia infiltrated

with human rights violation and brutal suppression.

With a slight shift in the prefix, “utopia” generates diverse meanings that are

inherently paradoxical. A happy place could be an imaginary non-place; a non-place could

be an arresting nightmare that projects reality unto its literary representations. Are the

conflicting ideas mutually exclusive, though? Mao’s Cultural Revolution was based upon

his “utopian” projection, a projection that ultimately led to famine, the subversion of

family and traditional values, and millions of deaths, to name just a few consequences. Its

intention was hopeful and its name suggested a radical change common to utopian

impulses. The implementation of the People’s Commune, a practice familiar to the readers

of Utopia, was partly the half-way result of Mao’s blueprint for a better future. However,

the eventual outcome was diabolical. The saying, “One man’s utopia is another’s dystopia”,

finds its historical resonance there. On the other hand, Taiwan had also gone through a

despotic reign by the then-ruling Nationalist Party, whose schematised White Terror (1949-

1987) had caused unaccounted-for disappearances of dissidents, along with the suppression

and murder of civilians, to name but a few of its atrocities. There were utopian impulses

across the Taiwan Strait back then; there are utopian impulses now, still, on both sides.

What makes a difference is the acceptance or rejection of varying utopian desires, whose

utterances insinuate differences that depart from the status quo. No dissident views have

survived under the Communist Party of China; the Party’s utopian impulse has always been

the impulse that sees the light. In contrast, Taiwan has emerged from its dystopic past;

nowadays the voice of a recusant is able to be expressed and heard. An alternative world

order is not unfathomable to the Taiwanese: to me who grew up knowing that differences

are appreciated and their articulation is not penalised.

Ten years after Peter Fitting wrote that “the crucial first step in the modern study

of utopia was […] the definitional one”, this crucial first step at present should perhaps

not be focused on its definitional nebulousness but on recognising the inevitable evolution

and diversification of the concept of utopia, born from our innate need to envision

555 Luo Guan Cong, 羅冠聰 “luo guan cong kan fan song zhong ：zou chu wu li de you gu ，

xiang gang ren cong xue he han xun zhao zi wo” 羅冠聰看反送中：走出無力的幽谷，香港人

從血和汗尋找自我 [Luo Guan Cong’s View on Anti-Extradition Bill: Out of the Valley of

Powerlessness, Hong Kongers Seek Self-Identity through Blood and Sweat] The Reporter, 15 June 2019 <https://www.twreporter.org/a/opinion-hong-kong-extradition-law-young-generation-identity> 12 August 2019.

https://www.twreporter.org/a/opinion-hong-kong-extradition-law-young-generation-identity


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something different, something better. Where caution is required is in the need to be

modest enough to retain space for flexibility. Here I shall go back to the contemporary

utopian mentality discussed earlier in this dissertation. Resorting to Dias de Carvalho’s

definition of philosophical utopia that highlights possibilities, Vieira offers a postulation

that clarifies the ambiguity embedded in this concept when applied to the contemporary

context:

Although it may incite us to define the nature of our horizon (our ideal), it does not force us to stick to the end of our idealization, as the ideal is informed by a surplus of desire, which provides us with space for a constant redefinition, and is ready to accept the notion of error, which it incorporates when reformulating its new horizon.556

Redefinition and reformulation are operative words here; or, rather, the prefix re- is the

defining feature of this contemporary utopian mentality. It brings us to the circularity

highlighted by Louis Marin: yet, instead of the dichotomic tension between ou- and eu-, the

new horizon is constantly under review, constantly being refined and renegotiated. It is this

emphasis on possibilities and flexibilities that sets utopia apart from its perilous

counterpart, dystopia, as well as from the conventionally understood utopia of the static.

And utopia moves forward. Translations enable contemporary readers to appreciate

the libellus; the libellus reclaims life through readers’ engagement with both the text and with

their own vision. While Vieira argues that the contemporary utopian mentality is “a

dialectical strategy that the author expects the reader to be involved with”, I suggest that

utopia gains validity when readers actively produce their own synthesis (of the two books

of Utopia) and hypothesis (of their own vision). As utopia has evolved into a common

discourse, I should like to end this dissertation quoting the award-winning sci-fi writer

China Miéville, in his introduction to a new edition of Utopia, part of the project Utopia

2016: A Year of Imagination and Possibility:

the fact that the utopian impulse is always stained doesn’t mean it can or should be denied or battened down. It is as inevitable as hate and anger and joy, and as necessary. Utopianism isn’t hope, still less optimism: it is need, and it is desire. For recognition, like all desire, and/but for the specifics of its reveries and programmes, too; and above all for betterness tout court. For alterity, something other than the exhausting social lie. For rest. And when

556 Vieira (2017) 67-68.

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the cracks in history open wide enough, the impulse may even jimmy them a little wider.557

My research on Utopia belongs to the academic discourse; the inevitability of the utopian

impulse is, on the other hand, everyday discourse. In the fall semester of 2019, I offered a

seminar on early modern utopian literature. My aim was to examine the multifaceted

utopianism in early modern Europe that tends to be overlooked in the Taiwanese higher

education curriculum. Students’ comments and questions, however, went beyond what I

originally considered to be “academic”. Whether we read Margaret Cavendish’s The Blazing

World or Thomas More’s Utopia, what had often appeared in students’ discussions were

their reference to politics, and more recently, their reprimand of totalitarian suppression

masquerading as the sole political solution in Hong Kong. Seeing how students voiced their

concerns and how they made modern references to Utopia partly resolved my enquiries

from the outset of my doctoral journey. For a long time, I had trouble recognising the

importance or necessity of my project. I surveyed fourteen standalone Mandarin

translations of Utopia, which were crucial especially as they had filled in the gap of a

previously neglected aspect of utopian studies. Yet, “how is it relevant outside the groves

of Academe?” was my doubt. My research shows me how paratexts and adaptations have

consolidated the translator’s role in transmitting and re-writing Utopia, and that Utopia has

become a cultural product of the interpretive creation, catering to personal agenda or

otherwise. My seminar, on the other hand, has enabled me to observe students’ responses

to More’s text and taught me that the moral responsibility of Utopia’s translations should

no longer be fixated on its fidelity to the original text, but rather, on its potential to kindle

readers’ awareness of injustice of various kinds. Voicing his concerns on social maladies

was what drove Thomas More to compose his ideal realm on paper; engaging students in

and raising their awareness through the study of Utopia is, perhaps, the crucial next step

that shall be consciously planned into our curriculum in breaking students out of the ivory

tower.

557 Thomas More, Utopia. Introduction by China Miéville (London, New York: Verso, 2016) 6.

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214

MA Theses: China

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He, Lixia和丽霞. “Shuangmian xinshijie: lun <mei li xin shi jie > zhong de wutuobang —

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邦张力 [The Janus-faced New World: Utopia-dystopia Tension in Brave New World].

MA Thesis. Beijing: Beijing Foreign Studies University, 2018.

Li, Huijie 李慧杰. “<Hei an zhao zhao> de fan wutuobang zhuti yanjiu” 《黑暗昭昭》

的反乌托邦主题研究 [A Study on Anti-Utopian Themes in Darkness Visible]. MA

Thesis. Shanghai: East China University of Science and Technology, 2017.

Li, Na 李娜. “En si te·bu luo he wutuobang zhexue sixiang tanjiu” 恩斯特·布洛赫乌托

邦哲学思想探究 [An Exploration of Ernst Bloch’s Utopian Philosophy]. MA Thesis.

Shanghai: Shanghai Normal University, 2016.

Liao, Zhenjun 廖桢君. “Shashibiya xiju zhong de wutuobang shengtai zhuti” 莎士比亚喜

剧中的乌托邦生态主题 [The Utopian Ecological Concerns of Shakespeare’s

Comedies]. MA Thesis. Chongqing: Southwest University, 2016.

Lu, Juan 吕娟. “dong xi fang he xie zhi jing” 东西方和谐之境 [The Harmony of the

Occident and the Orient]. MA Thesis. Chongqing: Sichuan International Studies

University, 2016. Zhao, Lihua 赵利华. “Wutuobang jiangou lilun fenxi” 乌托邦建构

理论分析 [The Analysis of Utopian Construction Theory]. MA Thesis. Fuzhou:

Fujian Normal University, 2016.

Meng, Xiaoman 孟笑曼. “Zhan mu xun de wutuobang sixiang shulun” 詹姆逊的乌托邦

思想述论 [A Review of Frederic Jameson’s Utopian Thoughts]. MA Thesis.

Shenyang: Shenyang Normal University, 2016.

Song, Ruirong 宋瑞荣. “Xinshiji xiaoshuo wutuobang xushi yanjiu” 新世纪小说乌托邦

叙事研究 [Utopian Narrative of the Novel in the New Century]. MA Thesis. Jizhou:

Bohai University, 2016.

215

Wu, Wenqi 吴文琦. “Duo li si ·lai xin zhonghouqi xiaoshuo xushi zhong de fan wutuo

bang xushi” 多丽丝·莱辛中后期小说叙事中的反乌托邦叙事 [Anti-Utopian

Narrative in the Mid-Late Novel Creations of Doris Lessing]. MA Thesis. Guangzhou:

Guangzhou University, 2016.

Yao, Siyu 姚思雨. “Xiandaixing shiyu xia Bu luo he wutuobang jingshen yanjiu” 现代性视

域下布洛赫乌托邦精神研究 [Research on Ernst Bloch’s Spirit of Utopia in the

Horizon of Modernity]. MA Thesis. Xi’an: Xi’an Technological University, 2016.

Yao, Yinuo姚一诺. “zhan mu xun wu tuo bang si xiang tan ya” 詹姆逊乌托邦思想探要

[A Brief Exploration on Frederic Jameson’s Utopian Thoughts]. MA Thesis. Wuhan:

Central China Normal University, 2017.

Zhan, Dan 詹丹. “Huan tuo bang, e tuo bang, yi tuo bang” 幻托邦，恶托邦，异托邦

[Disillusionment-utopia, Anti-utopia, Heterotopias]. MA Thesis. Hefei: Anhui

University, 2016.

Zhang, Chao Kun Peng 张超昆鹏. “Tuo ma si・mo er <wutuobang> sixiang wenhua

yuanyuan chutan” 托马斯·莫尔《乌托邦》思想文化渊源初探 [A Study of the

Cultural Origin of Thomas More’s Utopia]. Nanjing: University of Nanjing, 2017.

Zhao, Lihua 赵利华 . “Wutuobang jiangou lilun fenxi” 乌托邦建构理论分析 [The

Analysis of Utopian Construction Theory]. MA Thesis. Fuzhou: Fujian Normal

University, 2016.

MA Theses: Taiwan

Chen, Shi-Xuan 陳仕軒. “Shuqing、wutuobang yu ziwo jiyi: Zheng Xiao-Xu de zhengzhi

shixue” 抒情、烏托邦與自我技藝：鄭孝胥的政治詩學 [Lyric, Utopia and Self-

Techniques: A Study of Zheng Xiao-Xu’s Political Poetics]. MA Thesis. Nantou:

National Chi Nan University, 2017. Abstract available at


bin/gs32/gsweb.cgi/ccd=0F1qAR/record?r1=9&h1=0>.

https://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/cgi-bin/gs32/gsweb.cgi/ccd=0F1qAR/record?r1=9&h1=0


216

Hung, Hui-Min 洪惠敏. huan jing jiao yu guan dian xia de ren lei yu chong wu gong cun

「wu tuo bang 」—kong jian rong ru shi chong wu jia ju zhi yan jiu“ 環境教育觀點

下的人類與寵物共存「烏托邦」—空間融入式寵物家具之研究 [Humanities

and Pets Coexist “Utopia” in the View of Environmental Education Research on the

Space-Incorporating Pet Future]. MA Thesis. Kaohsiung: Shu-Te University, 2017.

Abstract available at <https://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/cgi-


Jiang, Fang-Tsun 江芳存. “Changyu yuwang wutuobang: yingxiang chuangzuo lunshu” 場

域慾望烏托邦：影像創作論述 [Field, Desire, Utopia: Exploration of the Image

Creation]. Taipei: University of Taipei, 2017. Abstract available at



Jiang, Meng-Syuan 江孟璇. “Fan wutuobang zhi lu: <yi jiu ba si> yu <hua shi 451 du>

zhong jijikewei de ziyou” 反烏托邦之旅：《一九八四》與《華氏 451度》中岌岌

可危的自由 [Journeys to Dystopias: Infringements to Liberty in Nineteen Eighty-Four

and Fahrenheit 451]. MA Thesis. Kaohsiung: National Kaohsiung Normal University,

2018. Abstract available at <https://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/cgi-


Lai, Yi-Ru 賴依汝. “Wu yue tian de wutuobang shijie: cong xushi piping guandian fenxi

<xian chang．zhan chang．meng gong chang> dianying jilupian” 五月天的烏托邦

世界:從敘事批評觀點分析〈現場·戰場·夢工場〉電影紀錄片 [Mayday’s Utopia:

A Narrative Criticism of the ‘Live in Live’ Documentary]. MA Thesis. Taipei:

National Taiwan Normal University, 2017. Abstract available at



Liang, Siang-Yun 梁襄荺 . “Xi lun <wanmei shijie sanbuqu> zhong wutuobang de

huanmie yu zaisheng” 析論《完美世界三部曲》中烏托邦的幻滅與再生

[Utopian Disillusion and Re-creation in Matched Trilogy]. MA Thesis. Taitung:

National Taitung University, 2016. Abstract available at













217

Liao, Pei-Wun 廖珮雯. “「Dai tianbu de kongjian」: <shinu de gushi> zhong de (fan)

wutuobang kongjian”「待填補的空間」：《使女的故事》中的（反）烏托邦空間

[“A Space to be Filled”: Utopian (Dystopian) Space in The Handmaid’s Tale]. MA Thesis.

Taipei: National Taiwan University, 2017. Abstract available at



Tsou, Pao-Chen 鄒保禛. “Chujue wanxing lianxi—weixing wutuobang” 觸覺完形練習—

微型烏托邦 [Wooltopia]. MA Thesis. Tainan: Tainan National University of the Arts,

2017. Abstract available at <https://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/cgi-


Yao, Teng-Jie 姚騰傑. “<lai zi xin shi jie> de wutuobang lunshu”《來自新世界》的烏托

邦論述 [Discussion about Utopia in From the New World]. MA Thesis. Taichung:

National Taichung University of Education, 2017. Abstract available at



Works Published in China, 2016-2018

Chen, Qingchao 陈庆超. Wu tuo bang jing shen de lun li jia zhi 乌托邦精神的伦理价值 [The

Ethical Values of Utopian Spirits]. Beijing: She hui ke xue wen xian chu ban she,

2016.

Cui, Jingsheng 崔竞生. Cong chong jing dao kun jing: Ying guo wu tuo bang xiao shuo zhong de ke ji

zhu ti yan jiu 从憧憬到困境：英国乌托邦小说中的科技主题研究 [From

Anticipation to Frustration: On the Subject of Science and Technology in English

Utopian Novels]. Wuhan: Wu han da xue chu ban she, 2016.

Cui, Shaofeng 崔绍锋. Qing xie de wu tuo bang: Yan lian ke chuang zuo lun 倾斜的乌托邦：阎

连科创作论 [A Tilted Utopia: On Yan Lianke’s Creation]. Changchun: Ji lin ren

min chu ban she, 2016.

Duan Musong 端木松 . Mou sha wu tuo bang 谋杀乌托邦 [Murder Utopia]. Chengdu:

Sichuan wenyi chubanshe, 2017.







218

Huang, Ying 黄英. Gong ze xian zhi de wu tuo bang shu xie 宫泽贤治的乌托邦书写 [Kenji

Miyazawa’s Utopian Writing]. Beijing: Wai yu jiao xue yu yan jiu she, 2016.

Jiang, Yu 蒋瑜. Kua guo jie wu tuo bang: Li gong nan 100 tian huan you bei mei 跨国界乌托邦：

理工男 100 天环游北美 [Crossing-Boundary Utopia: A Polytechnic Boy’s 100

Days Around North America]. Beijing: Zhong guo ren min da xue chu ban she,

2016.

Li, Xiaojian 李小江. Nu xing wu tuo bang: Zhong guo nu xing/xing bie yan jiu er shi jiang 女性烏

托邦：中國女性/性別研究二十講 [Women’s and Gender Studies in New China

(Twenty Topics)]. Beijing: She hui ke xue wen xian chu ban she, 2016.

Lin, Jia 林笳. Zhong guo ji you tai yi nu shi ren zhu bai lan (Klara Blum) sheng ping yu zuo pin xuan

中国籍犹太裔女诗人朱白兰 (Klara Blum)生平与作品选 [Chinese Jewish

Poetess Klara Blum’s Life and Works]. Guangzhou: Zhong shan da xue chu ban she,

2016.

Qian, Houcheng 钱厚诚. Bian zheng de wu tuo bang li xiang: Da wei·ha wei kong jian li lun de wen

ben jie du 辩证的乌托邦理想：大卫·哈维空间理论的文本解读 [Dialectical

Utopian Ideals: A Textual Interpretation of David Harvey’s Space Theory]. Beijing:

Zhong guo she hui ke xue chu ban she, 2016.

Qui Jin 鬼金. Wo de wu tuo bang 我的乌托邦 [My Utopia]. Nanjing: Jiangsu fenghuang

wenyi chubanshe, 2017.

Song, Xiumei 宋秀梅. Wu tuo bang shi dai ge ti ming yun de yi shu bei wang lu: 1920–1930 nian

dai pu la dong nuo fu xiao shuo chuang zuo yan jiu 乌托邦时代个体命运的艺术备忘录：

1920-1930 年代普拉东诺夫小说创作研究 [An Artistic Memorandum of

Individual Destiny During the Utopian Era: A Study of Andrei Platonov’s Writings,

1920s-1930s]. Nanjing: Dong nan da xue chu ban she, 2016.

Wang, Jianghuo 王江火. Xian feng xiao zhen: Xin wen ming wu tuo bang 先锋小镇：新文明

乌托邦 [Pioneering Township: Utopia of the New Civilization]. Shanghai: Shang

hai san lian shu dian, 2016.

Wang, Jianxiang 王建香. Fan wu tuo bang 反烏托邦 [Anti-Utopia]. Beijing: Gao deng jiao

yu chu ban she, 2016

219

Wang, Jie 王杰. Xun zhao wu tuo bang: Xian dai mei xue de wei ji yu zhong jian 寻找乌托邦：

现代美学的危机与重建 [Searching for Utopia: Crisis and Reconstruction of

Modern Aesthetics]. Beijing: Ren min wen xue chu ban, 2016.

Wang, Yiping. 王一平. 思考與界定: “反烏托邦” “惡烏托邦”小說名實之辨 “The

Distinction between Anti-Utopian Fiction and Dystopian Fiction.” 四川大學學報

(哲學社會科學版 ) Journal of Sichuan University (Philosophy and Social Science

Edition) 2017 (208): 55-63.

Wu, Jianren 吳趼人. Xin Shitou Ji 新石頭記 [New Story of the Stone]. Shanghai: Gailiang

Xiaoshuo She, 1908.

Xie, Changfei 谢昌飞. Xiandaixing pipan de shenmei changyu yu wutuobang de zhongjian现代性

批判的审美场域与乌托邦的重建 [The Aesthetic Field of the Critique of

Modernity and the Reconstruction of Utopia] Beijing: People’s Publishing House,

2018.

Zhang, Kongzhi 张康之. Zong ti xing yu wu tuo bang: Ren ben zhu yi ma ke si zhu yi de zong ti fan

chou 总体性与乌托邦：人本主义马克思主义的总体范畴 [Totality and Utopia:

A Perspective of Humanitarian Marxism]. Beijing: Zhong guo ren min da xue chu

ban she, 2016.

Works Published in Taiwan, 2016-2018

Chan, Koonchung 陳冠中. Wu tuo bang, er tuo bang, yi tuo bang: Chan Koonchung shidai wenpingji

烏托邦、惡托邦、異托邦 : 陳冠中時代文評集 [Utopia, Dystopia, Heterotopia:

Selected Essays of Chan Koonchung]. Taipei: Maitian chuban, 2018.

Chen, Dengwu, and Wu Youneng 陳登武, 吳有能, eds. Shui de Wu tuo bang? 500 nian lai de

fansi yu bianzheng誰的烏托邦? 500年來的反思與辯證 [Whose Utopia? Reflections

and Dialectics in 500 Years]. Taipei: Shida chuban zhongxin, 2017.

He, Guoqing 何國慶. Wan li jia dao: Duo yuan kai fang chuang yi de wen hua sheng shi 萬曆駕到：

多元·開放·創意的文化盛世 [The Royal Arrival of Emperor Wanli: The Cultural

Heyday of the Dynamic, the Receptive, and the Creative]. Taipei: Yuanliu, 2016.

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Ko, Hungto 柯鴻圖. Wu tuo bang de yixiangjia: Ko Hongtu huihua zuopinji 烏托邦的藝

想家：柯鴻圖繪畫作品集 [A Utopian Artist: Illustration Portfolio of Ko

Hungto]. Taipei: Daji wenhua, 2017.

Yin, Wenhui 尹雯慧. Mi tu: Liu wang lu shang de wu tuo bang 謎途：流亡路上的烏托邦

[Puzzling Routes: The Utopia on the Way of Exile]. Taipei: Tai wan tu bo zhi you

hui, 2016.

Zeng, Guomin 曾國民. Zi you wen hua di qiu guo 自由文化地球國 [The Earth Nation of

Free Culture]. Taipei: Lie hai ren, 2016.

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Utopia Refracted through Mandarin Lenses - Univerzita Karlova

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