Raphael Hythloday and Lucian's Cynic

This essay responds to an argument made by R. Bracht Branham, who has argued that More's Utopia privileges Raphael Hythloday's voice over Morus's. Branham contrasts this dynamic with Lucian's Cynicus, in which he contends that the dominant Cynic speaker is ironically undermined. For Branham, More's idealism moves him to privilege the idealistic Raphael over the pragmatic Morus. I argue, on the contrary, that Raphael is rather ironically undermined in the same vein as was Lucian's Cynic figure, and that the dialogue reveals a like-mindedness between More and Lucian in their caution against a self-absorbed idealism. Furthermore, I utilize Virginia Cox's categories of “fictional” and “documentary” dialogic modes to argue that More employs a deliberate generic blending as part of this purpose. The vivid concreteness of contemporary England in Book I is pointedly contrasted with the utter fantasy of the “no-place” that dominates Book II

Aesthetics · Argument (complex analysis) · Art · Art history · Dialogic · Epistemology · Idealism · Literature · Sociology · Utopia · Byzantine Studies and History · Medieval Literature and History · Philosophy · Reformation and Early Modern Christianity