Translating 'Utopia': The poetics and politics of the literary genre (Thomas Moore)

Thomas More's Utopia presents a pun on “utopia” as the good place (eutopos) and the no place (outopos ). However, a closer reading reveals that this ambiguous pun is actually a transcription and (mis)translation of the name “Utopia” from its original Utopian language into Greek and then Latin. This is one of many translations through which the tale of utopia is told. Gaps in translation, the confusion of literal and figurative meaning and the fusion of utopian and domestic horizons are a few of the results produced by translation, prompting the reader to take on the role of the translator of utopia. In this thesis, I explore how the genres of translation and utopia interact to produce a critical, creative and interactive discourse concerning the ideal society.; Structurally, this thesis is divided into a discussion of the poetics and politics of utopian translation. In “The Poetics of Utopian Translation,” a close reading of Thomas More's Utopia demonstrates how utopia is transmitted to the reader through translation. I identify five translation layers, consisting of the original, unknown utopia, the translated account of utopia, metalepsis and metafiction, the hyperreal domain and translation as a world-making activity with others. In my reading of Margaret Cavendish's Blazing World and Denis Diderot's Les bijoux indiscrets, I demonstrate that the translation of the tyrant's tale serves as a source for a potential utopian social contract. Hieroglyphic moments (the role of transmutation) are discussed in the Marquis de Sade's Justine and William S. Burroughs Naked Lunch. Based on these readings, a narratological chart for the utopian genre is presented in the Intermezzo.; In “The Politics of Utopian Translation,” I examine the ethics of translation in Hannah Arendt's Eichmann in Jerusalem and Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels, the initiation of the reader as translator in the Jan Potocki's Manuscrit trouvé à Saragosse and the agonistics of translation in Patrick Chamoiseau's Texaco. By framing the act of translation, exposing the ethics of translation and revealing that our best translations are shaped in dialogue with others, the utopian genre offers a powerful medium for constituting a more perfect society.