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More's Utopia is not generally known as a confessional work. Most scholars believe that whatever values derive from the work, they must be humanistic in some basic sense—social, philosophical, historical, or religious values. Conceiving of Utopia as a confessional, however, promises to enlarge this orientation to include psychological considerations. New motivations for the work's creation might be suggested, as well as different views of Christian humanism and of the generic Utopian fantasy.
Two particular contributions to More studies lend credibility to this approach. Professor David Bevington has argued some years ago that because the overall frame of the work is in the form of a dialogue, it makes sense to treat it as a “dialogue of the mind with itself,” with More and Raphael representing the “two polarities of More's own mind.”1 This view is valid, since psychology has taught that characters in a work are usually representations of different facets of the author's personality. Professor J. H. Hexter, meanwhile, has offered biographical evidence for viewing the dialogue as a confession of personal feeling. He points out that Book II was written first in the Netherlands, and that the offer of a job in Court by Henry and Wolsey prompted More to add the dialogue of Book I (when he returned to England) before considering the work complete.2 This fact suggests that either the dialogue, or perhaps the whole work, became for More an occasion to express and justify his feelings about the state, about power, and most of all, about his capacity to contribute to the public weal. In an immediate sense, at least part of the Utopia is a confession of his dilemma whether or not to serve the king.
This essay proposes that considerably more is being confessed. In particular, beneath this tale of social felicity, More