Mundus Alter Et Idem

Author: Joseph Hall

Usually translated as "Another World and yet the Same", Bishop Hall's book has been claimed as the first anti-utopia. Coming less than a century after Thomas More wrote his seminal book, this was an outrageous satire in which all the faults of contemporary society are pushed to gross excess. It is set in Terra Australis (probably the first work of fiction to use that name) the unknown southern continent that has started to appear in the work of some mapmakers. This southern continent was always presented as the mirror image of northern continents, and so Hall makes the society there the mirror image of things in the north. Thus the physical indulgence in Crapulia is so extreme that the rich employ servants to hold their eyes open and put food into their mouths. Viraginia is a land rules by women; Moronia is a land where morons mimic the Catholic Church; and Lavernia is a land of thieves. Why it's on the list: Early utopias are often presented as being worthy and sometimes quite dull, but when utopian writers went for comedy the result is scatological, excessive and very far from dull. Another, slightly later example is the sexual licentiousness in Isle of Pines by Henry Neville which was abhorred at the time as being pornography.

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Mundus Alter Et Idem

Author: Joseph Hall

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