The Game and Play of Utopia

Abstract

Abstract The Utopians of Thomas More’s Utopia (1516) play two games, variants on chess. The first is a number game, but the second, where ‘the vices fight with the virtues in battle’ allows for a new way to interpret Utopia itself. By comparing it to popular moralizations of chess at the time, especially the Liber De Moribus Hominum et Officiis Nobilium Super Ludo Scacchorum of Jacobus de Cessolis, it becomes apparent that this game is used not only to replicate the distinctions between Utopian society and European, but also reflects the work Utopia. Utopia also constructs itself as a battle between virtues and vices, and this ludic structure indicates the work’s iterative nature and demonstrates how the work asks its readers to respond to it. What is more, recognizing Utopia itself as a game suggests that it is possible to further define the utopian genre as participation within this same tradition of game playing, exchanging the pieces on the board depending on the particular concerns of the author and context, but playing the same game. Thus, an understanding of utopian writing as a game emerges, alongside a demonstration of why Utopia remains such a pre-eminent example of the genre.