2. Philosophical and Religious Antecedents: Plato’s Republic and the Book of Revelation

Core text: Republic, 369b-374a; 473a-474c; 580d-583b; Book of Revelation, 21 (see for instance http://www.kingjamesbibleonline.org/Revelation-Chapter-21/)

Secondary literature: Malcolm Schofield, Plato: Political Philosophy, Oxford 2006; Julia Annas, Introduction to Plato’s Republic, Oxford 1981 (especially pp. 101-108); Julia Annas, ‘The Atlantis story: the Republic and the Timaeus’, in Plato’s Republic: A Critical Guide, ed. Mark L. McPherran, Cambridge 2010, pp. 52-64; Donald R. Morrison, ‘The Utopian Character of Plato’s Ideal City’, in The Cambridge Companion to Plato’s Republic, ed. G.R.F. Ferrari, Cambridge 2007, pp. 232-255; Nickolas Pappas, The Routledge Guidebook to Plato’s Republic, Part I, Abingdon 1995.

3. Utopia: Thomas More

Core texts: Thomas More, Utopia, Book II, in Three Early Modern Utopias, ed. S. Bruce, Oxford 1999 – online: pp. 121-216.

Secondary literature: Fátima Vieira, ‘The Concept of Utopia’, in The Cambridge Companion to Utopian Literature, ed. Gregory Claeys, Cambridge 2010 pp. 3-27; Dominic Baker-Smith, ‘Reading Utopia’, in The Cambridge Companion to Thomas More, ed George M. Logan, Cambridge 2011, pp. 139-167; Jennifer Morrish, ‘A Note on the Neo-Latin Sources for the Word ‘Utopia’’, Humanistica Lovaniensia, Vol. 50 (2001), pp. 119-130.

4. Dystopia: Erasmus’ Praise of Folly, and the beginning of Italian utopias/dystopias

Core texts: Erasmus, The Praise of Folly and Other Writings, ed. Robert M. Adams, New York and London 1989, pp. 3-9, 22-26, 34-35, 86; Ortensio Lando, 'Meglio è d’esser pazzo che savio', in Paradossi, ed. Antonio Corsaro, Rome 2000, pp. 122-130 (English ed.: The Defence of Contraries, London 1593: 'The Fool', pp. 41-52).

Secondary literature: Article ‘Erasmus’ in Encyclopedia of the Renaissance, ed. Paul F. Grendler, editor in chief. New York 1999. Paul Grendler, Critics of the Italian World 1530-60: Anton Francesco Doni, Nicolò Franco and Ortensio Lando, Madison 1969. Patrizia Grimaldi Pizzorni, The Ways of Paradox from Lando to Donne, Florence 2007

5. Ironic Worlds and Architectural Dreams: Alberti’s Momus and De re aedificatoria

Core texts: Alberti, Momus, ed. by Virginia Brown and Sarah Knight, Cambridge, MA 2003: pp. 3-11, 199-219; On the Art of Building in Ten Books, ed. Joseph Rykwert, Neil Leach and Robert Tavernor, Cambridge, MA 1988, pp. 1-6.

Secondary literature: Anthony Grafton, Leon Battista Alberti: Master Builder of the Italian Renaissance, New York 2000; Martin Mclaughlin, ‘Alberti and the redirection of Renaissance Humanism’, Proceedings of the British Academy: 2009 Lectures, 167 (2010), pp. 25-59; Martin Mclaughlin, ‘Tradizione letteraria e originalità del pensiero nel De Re Aedificatoria dell’Alberti’, in Leon Battista Alberti teorico delle arti e gli impegni civili del ‘De Re Aedificatoria’, ed. A. Calzona, F. P. Fiore, A. Tenenti, C. Vasoli, Florence 2006, pp. 451-69; David Marsh, Lucian and the Latins: Humor and Humanism in the Early Renaissance, Ann Arbor 1998; Paul F. Grendler, ‘Utopia in Renaissance Italy: Doni’s “New World”’, Journal of the History of Ideas, 26/4 (1965), pp. 479-494 Alina A. Payne, The Architectural Treatise in the Italian Renaissance: Architectural Invention, Ornament, and Literary Culture, Cambridge 1999.

7. Scientific Utopia: Bacon’s New Atlantis

Core Text: Francis Bacon, New Atlantis, in The Works of Francis Bacon, ed. James Spedding, Robert Leslie Ellis and Douglas Denon Heath, 14 vols (London, Longman, 1857– 74), vol. 5, pp. 355-413.

Secondary literature: Robert Appelbaum, Literature and Utopian Politics in Seventeenth-Century England, Cambridge 2002. Richard Serjeantson, ‘Natural Knowledge in the New Atlantis, in Francis Bacon’s The New Atlantis: New Interdisciplinary Essays, ed. Browne Price, Manchester 2002, pp. 82-105.

8. Imagined New Worlds

Core texts: Amerigo Vespucci, Letter to Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco de’ Medici (1502), in Il mondo nuovo di Amerigo Vespucci: Vespucci autentico e apocrifo, ed. Mario Pozzi, Milan 1984, pp. 78-82. Giordano Bruno, Ash Wednesday/La Cena de Le Ceneri: Third Dialogue: propositions 3 and 4. (Italian edition: Opere italiane, ed. G. Aquilecchia, Turin 2002; English editions: The Ash Wednesday Supper = La cena de le Ceneri, translated with an introduction and notes by Stanley J. Jaki, Berlin 1975; The Ash Wednesday Supper, ed. Edward A. Gosselin, Lawrence S. Lerner, Renaissance Society of America, Toronto 1977.

Secondary literature: New Worlds Reflected: Travel and Utopia in the Early Modern Period, ed. C. Houston, Aldershot 2010. Eva Del Soldato, Article ‘Natural Philosophy in the Renaissance’, in Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (available online: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/natphil-ren/); Alfonso Ingegno, Cosmologia e filosofia nel pensiero di Giordano Bruno, Florence 1978.

9. A New Society: Campanella, La Città del Sole

Core texts: Tommaso Campanella, La città del sole, ed. Laura Salvetti Firpo and Germana Ernst, Rome-Bari 1997. This version is also free available online: http://www.iliesi.cnr.it/ATC/intro.php?op=1 (selection: pp. 1-18, 26-28, 36-43). English edition: La città del sole dialogo poetico = The City of the Sun: a poetical dialogue, translated with introd. and notes by Daniel J. Donno, Oakland 1981. Comparison with Johann Valentin Andreae’s Christianopolis (map of the city).

Secondary literature: Germana Ernst, Tommaso Campanella: The Book and the Body of Nature, translated by David L. Marshall, Dordrecht 2010; Germana Ernst, Article ‘Tommaso Campanella’, in Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (ONLINE: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/campanella/).

** Research tools: Oxford Bibliographies; Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy