莫尔《乌托邦》的空间批评

Spatial Criticism of Thomas More’s Utopia

乌托邦作为一个陈述理想之邦的文类,柏拉图的《理想国》应是滥觞。但中世纪对理想社会的描述基本上是空白。故莫尔的《乌托邦》具有开创性意义。此后《太阳城》《新大西岛》这类广义上的乌托邦文学常新不败。莫尔的时代是地理大发现的时代,莫尔本人曾任公国首相和英国大法官,故他的乌托邦构想,具有早期资本主义空间开拓的现实借鉴意义。抵御外敌,预防自然灾害,这是乌托邦城市规划的两个首要考虑。这跟《新约·启示录》描述的新耶路撒冷圣城一类宗教乌托邦,大有不同。安贝托·艾柯比较过安德里亚的《基督城》和培根的《新大西洲》等多种乌托邦叙事,《基督城》这个寡民小国,比起《启示录》中的新耶路撒冷,毋宁说是介于真实空间与想象空间之间的一种"第三空间"。总体上看,乌托邦的理想空间尽管也下沿了"恶托邦"和反乌托邦的传统,但不妨碍它深入我们的无意识层面,建构起美好世界的样板。

Utopia, as a literary genre that states an ideal state, originated from Plato’s work The Republic. However, the depiction of the ideal society during the Middle Ages had been largely blank. In this sense, More’s Utopia is of pioneering significance. Since then, utopian literature in a broad sense, such as Sun City and New Atlantis, had been thriving. More’s era was one with great geographical discoveries. More himself served as the prime minister of the principality and the British justice, so his utopian concept had practical reference significance for early capitalist territorial development. Resisting foreign invasions and preventing natural disasters are the two primary concerns for utopian city planning. This is very different from the religious utopias such as the Holy City of New Jerusalem described in the New Testament(Revelation). Umberto Eco had compared various utopian narratives, such as Andreae’s Christianopolis and Bacon’s New Atlantis. Christianopolis was just a small country with a small population, simply a “third space” between real space and imaginary space as compared with the New Jerusalem in Revelation. On the whole, although the ideal space of utopia also followed the tradition of “anti-utopia” and “dystopia”, it does not prevent it from penetrating into our unconscious level and constructing a model for a better world.