The Invasion of Utopia

ABSTRACT: This article identifies the fear of invasion as a key to Thomas More's Utopia and its meaning for its first readers. I analyze More's historical, poetic, philosophical, and personal writings of the 1510s and 1520s to reveal his preoccupation with the many invasions that England suffered in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. The paratexts of early readers of Utopia , notably Jerome Busleyden and Ralph Robinson, demonstrate that More was addressing widely shared anxieties and formulating a vision of statecraft for a world of incessant war. The article concludes with More's return to the theme of invasion in his final works, evidence of an abiding link between anxiety, writing, and geopolitics.