More's Strategy of Naming in the Utopia
Several attempts have been made to schematize the etymological patterns of the invented names of the Utopia, but none of these adequately accounts for the deliberate evasiveness and inconsistency of More's technique. The efforts of the Dutch philologist Gerhard Vossius may serve as a case in po...
| Main Author: | |
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| Format: | Electronic Article |
| Language: | English |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
| Journals Online & Print: | Drawer...
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| Fernleihe: | Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste |
| Published: |
Sixteenth Century Journal Publishers, Inc.
1991
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| In: |
The sixteenth century journal
Year: 1991, Volume: 22, Issue: 2, Pages: 173-183 |
| Online Access: |
Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) |
| Summary: | Several attempts have been made to schematize the etymological patterns of the invented names of the Utopia, but none of these adequately accounts for the deliberate evasiveness and inconsistency of More's technique. The efforts of the Dutch philologist Gerhard Vossius may serve as a case in point: Time and again, in his attempt to derive the invented names from Greek and Latin roots, Vossius runs into dead ends and near misses that defeat his methodology. This is precisely the sort of no-win game More wants his reader to engage in. Having constructed some names out of recognizable elements, so as to suggest a coherent linguistic scheme, More creates others which are partly or wholly undecodable, thereby undermining the assumption that language can convey consistent or unambiguous meanings. In this strategy of linguistic subversion More was tutored by the Greek satirist Lucian of Samosata, with whose True Histories the Utopia has often been compared. |
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| ISSN: | 2326-0726 |
| Contains: | Enthalten in: The sixteenth century journal
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| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.2307/2542730 |