A Study Of Utopia:In The Perspective Of Rhetoric And Culture

Utopia,as the embodiment of the word,the concept and the thoughts,is generated from the vision and the creation of a Renaissance intellectual Sir Thomas More.More's literary canon Utopia officially came to the world in 1516.Since then,the universal transmission of Utopia in subsequent hundreds years inspired many generations of writers,philosophers,historians,sociologists,artists,and even ordinary men and women to try to imagine and to achieve in reality a better world.But ultimately,there are comes numerous Utopias,merely in a world of texts.Thus Utopia is not an isolated or independent text,it develops a group of texts and discourse relations,and opens up a field for ceaseless translating,creating,appreciating,interpreting,criticizing,communicating and circulating,with fights and wrestles among various rhetorical and cultural functions within it.This dissertation presents a utopian study in the perspectives of rhetoric and culture in seven parts:The Introduction begins with a deduction of the definition and the study dimension of Utopia,then surveys and emphasizes the cultural function of contemporary rhetoric;Chapter One utilizes oxymoron to analyze Utopian rhetoric tradition and its specific features which carry the cultural implications from space,time to desire;Chapter Two is a case study of three typical Utopian disposition texts of the Renaissance which focuses on the rhetorical expression of the authors that exposes the psychogenesis and the polarized trait of Utopia;Chapter Three continues further rhetorical exploration by interpreting the core text Utopia in deeper levels;Chapter four deals with the rhetorical narrative and the representation form of disseminated Utopian texts by close reading,deductive reasoning,comparative analysis,and cultural media study;Chapter Five turns to a cross-culture and cross-media study which explores the acceptance,influence and transformation of Utopian rhetoric in China,and the making of Chinesenized Utopian discourse in the context of globalization with the circulation of cultural energies;The Conclusion discusses the constructedness of Utopian rhetoric and the impetus with its cultural significances within Utopian tradition,and makes further assumption for future Utopian study.