Rethinking Utopian Projects in Early Modern Britain

Session Submission Type: Full Paper Panel

Session Description

This panel revisits the quest for stability in three early-modern English theorists: Thomas More, Francis Bacon, and James Harrington. In keeping with this year’s theme, the panel returns to some of England’s most famous “utopians” to ask how these writers managed difference and destabilization in sixteenth and seventeenth-century England. Presenters will engage More’s penal reforms, Bacon’s proposals for British Union and Irish colonization, and Harrington’s reform of marriage law. The panel stresses both the practical and literary elements of early-modern political theory. The panelists approach More’s Utopia, Bacon’s Essays and New Atlantis, and Harrington’s Oceana as sources for moderation, proto-feminist tropes, and invitations to rethink classical and Christian allusions. Together, the papers find resources for practical reform in ostensibly “utopian” texts.

Sub Unit

• Division 1: Political Thought and Philosophy: Historical Approaches

Individual Presentations

• The Origins of Incarceration in More’s Utopia - Jacob Samuel Abolafia, Stanford University

• The New Atlantis and Francis Bacon’s Imperial and Colonial Projects - Samuel Garrett Zeitlin, Corpus Christi College, University of Cambridge

• Moderation for the Age of Excess: Francis Bacon and the Dangers of Scientism - Erin A Dolgoy, Rhodes College

• Oceana’s “Marriage Bed”: James Harrington and Spousal Relations - Danielle Charette, University of Virginia

Chair

• David Lay Williams DePaul University

Discussants

• Rebecca Aili Ploof Leiden University

• David Lay Williams DePaul University