<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?><xml><records><record><source-app name="Biblio" version="7.x">Drupal-Biblio</source-app><ref-type>17</ref-type><contributors></contributors><titles><title><style face="normal" font="default" size="100%">&quot;The Prefatory/Postscript Letters to St. Thomas More’s Utopia:&lt;br /&gt;The Culture of ‘Seeing’ as a Reality-Conferring Strategy&quot;</style></title><secondary-title><style face="normal" font="default" size="100%">Journal of Early Modern Studies</style></secondary-title></titles><dates><year><style  face="normal" font="default" size="100%">2014</style></year></dates><volume><style face="normal" font="default" size="100%">3</style></volume><pages><style face="normal" font="default" size="100%">91-113</style></pages><language><style face="normal" font="default" size="100%">eng</style></language><abstract><style face="normal" font="default" size="100%">The article discusses the significance of on-the-spot observation and eye witnessing as powerful&lt;br&gt;scientific tools for establishing the real in the early sixteenth century. In particular, I argue that the&lt;br&gt;simulation of such tools in the paratextual material to Utopia, especially the prefatory/postscript&lt;br&gt;letters, enhance, preemptively, the verisimilitude of the Utopian society as well as the materiality&lt;br&gt;of the island at hand. If eye witnessing is reality-conferring, then, the powerful Renaissance act&lt;br&gt;of reading a text as a simulation of eye witnessing is reality-conferring too. In this light, to read&lt;br&gt;Utopia through the paratextual letters is to place one’s trust in the literal existence of Utopia insofar&lt;br&gt;as reading simulates the act of seeing with one’s own eyes and bearing witness to a palpable reality.&lt;br&gt;Keywords: Eye Witnessing, Humanism, Paratext, Utopia, Verisimilitude&lt;br&gt;1. Paratext, Utopia and Liminality&lt;br&gt;Nearly five hundred years after its first publication in 1516, Thomas More’s&lt;br&gt;Utopia continues to spark endless discussions in relation to its potential&lt;br&gt;meanings or its exact nature.1 More could not have written Utopia at a better&lt;br&gt;time. As Alistair Fox maintains, when he sat down to write it in 1515, ‘His&lt;br&gt;imagination had been excited by the discoveries of Cabot and Vespucci in the&lt;br&gt;New World… the momentum of Erasmian reform was approaching its height;&lt;br&gt;and he had the stimulating company… of Cuthbert Tunstal, Busleyden and&lt;br&gt;Peter Giles, humanists with interests and ambitions similar to his own’ (1984,&lt;br&gt;53). The publication of Utopia was accompanied by paratextual material (at&lt;br&gt;times called parerga) – maps, illustrations, verses as well as a number of letters&lt;br&gt;written by friends or acquaintances from the wider humanist continental&lt;br&gt;circles. By fervently supporting the project, this paratextual material – which&lt;br&gt;was altered to a great degree from edition to edition, thus also constantly&lt;br&gt;reshaping readers’ reception of Utopia – worked towards legitimising More’s&lt;br&gt;endeavour, establishing its truthfulness, and announcing beforehand its acceptance&lt;br&gt;by early sixteenth-century readership.2&lt;br&gt;‘Paratext’ in literature covers everything that lies around a text. Gérard&lt;br&gt;Genette has famously called paratext ‘a zone between text and off-text, a zone&lt;br&gt;not only of transition but also of transaction’ between the author(s) and the&lt;br&gt;public, or ‘the most socialized side of the practice of literature’ (1997, 1, 14).&lt;br&gt;&lt;br&gt;</style></abstract><issue><style face="normal" font="default" size="100%">3</style></issue></record></records></xml>