Topia was based in part on narratives that More heard and read about the encounters European people were having with indigenous people in the Americas. The "New World" represented for some people, More among them, a new way of thinking about the possibility of society--how you could imagine living. As a result, not only More but also other authors, such as Joseph Addison and Voltaire, sometimes stretched their imaginations to try to envision a kind of society that "solved the problems" of modern European society--that is, some Europeans used the news from America to re-envision their own societies, and begin to think about other possibilities, that is, "utopias". Read these excerpts from Thomas More's fictional work, Utopia. Then answer the questions referring back to this work: 1. How do the Utopians think about nature? Explain some of their most important ideas and the impact they have on their lives, including their customs around marriage, education, science, and other topics.
