| This thesis argues that Thomas More's Utopia (1516) critiques measures that England took to manage the mobile poor during the late medieval and early modern periods. Facing perceived and actual threats of vagrancy and idleness, England implemented policies between the fourteenth and seventeenth centuries that closely monitored, labeled, and restricted the movement of poor bodies. Examining parallels between English labor laws and Utopian practices reveals an ideology in both nations that values economic stability over individual freedom and desire. I first consider the dehumanizing effects of physically labeling mobile bodies through methods such as badging, branding, and public corporal punishment. Second, I discuss the ways in which surveillance arrangements transform charity and community from models of cooperation to ones of discipline. Finally, I argue that labor patterns in Utopia construct a lifestyle, characterized by psychological unsettledness and the disruption of families, which resembles that of England's mobile laborers. By linking a problematically "ideal" island with English labor laws, More ultimately exposes England's ethical failure to recognize its citizens as individuals, with legitimate social attachments, who deserve to have control over their own bodies. |
