Page "learned" Paragraph 982

Some who have written on Utopia have treated it as `` a learned diversion of a learned world '', `` a phantasy with which More amused himself '', `` a holiday work, a spontaneous overflow of intellectual high spirits, a revel of debate, paradox, comedy and invention ''.

With respect to this view, two points are worth making.

First, it appears to be based on the fact that on its title page Utopia is described as `` festivus '', `` gay ''.

It overlooks the other fact that it is described as `` Nec minus salutaris quam festivus '', `` no less salutary than gay ''.

It also overlooks the fact that in a rational lexicon, and quite clearly in More's lexicon, the opposite of serious is not gay but frivolous, and the opposite of gay is not serious but solemn.

More believed that a man could be both serious and gay.

That a writer who is gay cannot be serious is a common professional illusion, sedulously fostered by all too many academics who mistakenly believe that their frivolous efforts should be taken seriously because they are expressed with that dreary solemnity which is the only mode of expression their authors are capable of.

Secondly, to find a learned diversion and a pleasing joke in More's account of the stupid brutalities of early sixteenth century wars, of the anguish of the poor and dispossessed, of the insolence and cruelty of the rich and powerful requires a callousness toward suffering and sin that would be surprising in a moral imbecile and most surprising in More himself.

Indeed, it is even surprising in the Canon of Christ Church and Regius Professor of Ecclesiastical History, who fathered this most peculiar view, and in the brilliant Professor of Medieval and Renaissance English at Cambridge, who inherited it and is now its most eminent proponent.