Utopian times: The quest for the perfect society in Renaissance Italy and in the New World (Thomas More, Mambrino Roseo, Francesco Patrizi da Cherso, Anton Francesco Doni, Ludovico Agostini, Tommaso Campanella, Mexico, Paraguay)

Thomas More's Utopia (1516) had a number of imitators throughout Europe. In Italy, his example was followed by such authors as Mambrino Roseo, Francesco Patrizi da Cherso, Anton Francesco Doni, Ludovico Agostini and Tommaso Campanella. Defining a utopia as a genre that stands on the crossroads of politics, philosophy, and literature, this study discusses how utopias changed from the more theoretical to the more practical, since their first appearance in England to their Renaissance and Baroque developments in Italy.; Chapter 1 presents information about the historical context of the Italian utopias. Philosophical issues related to the conceptualization of utopia are discussed in Chapter 2. Chapter 3 addresses historical issues concerning the application of utopias in the New World, where More's and Campanella's utopian projects were realized. A semantic and textual analysis of utopian writings is presented in the last part of this study (Chapter 4). The Conclusion summarizes the study and discusses some utopian developments in the twentieth century. The Appendices present comparisons between Thomas More's Utopia and its Mexican application, and Campanella's Citta del sole and the Guarani republic, that enhance our understanding of relationship between literary and historical utopias.