@article {17087, title = {"The Prefatory/Postscript Letters to St. Thomas More{\textquoteright}s Utopia:
The Culture of {\textquoteleft}Seeing{\textquoteright} as a Reality-Conferring Strategy"}, journal = {Journal of Early Modern Studies}, volume = {3}, year = {2014}, pages = {91-113}, abstract = {The article discusses the significance of on-the-spot observation and eye witnessing as powerful
scientific tools for establishing the real in the early sixteenth century. In particular, I argue that the
simulation of such tools in the paratextual material to Utopia, especially the prefatory/postscript
letters, enhance, preemptively, the verisimilitude of the Utopian society as well as the materiality
of the island at hand. If eye witnessing is reality-conferring, then, the powerful Renaissance act
of reading a text as a simulation of eye witnessing is reality-conferring too. In this light, to read
Utopia through the paratextual letters is to place one{\textquoteright}s trust in the literal existence of Utopia insofar
as reading simulates the act of seeing with one{\textquoteright}s own eyes and bearing witness to a palpable reality.
Keywords: Eye Witnessing, Humanism, Paratext, Utopia, Verisimilitude
1. Paratext, Utopia and Liminality
Nearly five hundred years after its first publication in 1516, Thomas More{\textquoteright}s
Utopia continues to spark endless discussions in relation to its potential
meanings or its exact nature.1 More could not have written Utopia at a better
time. As Alistair Fox maintains, when he sat down to write it in 1515, {\textquoteleft}His
imagination had been excited by the discoveries of Cabot and Vespucci in the
New World{\textellipsis} the momentum of Erasmian reform was approaching its height;
and he had the stimulating company{\textellipsis} of Cuthbert Tunstal, Busleyden and
Peter Giles, humanists with interests and ambitions similar to his own{\textquoteright} (1984,
53). The publication of Utopia was accompanied by paratextual material (at
times called parerga) {\textendash} maps, illustrations, verses as well as a number of letters
written by friends or acquaintances from the wider humanist continental
circles. By fervently supporting the project, this paratextual material {\textendash} which
was altered to a great degree from edition to edition, thus also constantly
reshaping readers{\textquoteright} reception of Utopia {\textendash} worked towards legitimising More{\textquoteright}s
endeavour, establishing its truthfulness, and announcing beforehand its acceptance
by early sixteenth-century readership.2
{\textquoteleft}Paratext{\textquoteright} in literature covers everything that lies around a text. G{\'e}rard
Genette has famously called paratext {\textquoteleft}a zone between text and off-text, a zone
not only of transition but also of transaction{\textquoteright} between the author(s) and the
public, or {\textquoteleft}the most socialized side of the practice of literature{\textquoteright} (1997, 1, 14).

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