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More stands on the margins of modernity for one reason alone -- because he wrote Utopia.

And the evidence that he does, indeed, stand there derives quite simply from the vigorous interest with which rather casual readers have responded to that book for the past century or so.

Only one other contemporary of More's evokes so immediate and direct a response, and only one other contemporary work -- Niccolo Machiavelli and The Prince.

Can we discover what it is in Utopia that has evoked this response??

Remember that in seeking the modern in Utopia we do not deny the existence of the medieval and the Renaissance there ; ;

we do not even need to commit ourselves to assessing on the same inconceivable scale the relative importance of the medieval, the Renaissance, and the modern.

The medieval was the most important to Chambers because he sought to place Thomas More, the author of Utopia, in some intelligible relation with St. Thomas More, the martyr.

To others whose concern it is to penetrate the significance of Christian Humanism, the Renaissance elements are of primary concern.

But here we have a distinctly modern preoccupation ; ;

we want to know why that book has kept on selling the way it has ; ;

we want to know what is perennially new about Utopia.