Comparing Sir Thomas Mores Utopia and Virgils Aeneid Essay -- Compar

Identity and Power in Sir Thomas Mores Utopia and Virgils AeneidIn Utopia and the Aeneid, Sir Thomas More and Virgil describe the construction and continuation of a national identity element. In the former, the Utopian state operates on the inner(a) by enforcing, through methods of surveillance, a normalized identity on its citizens under the feigning of bettering their lives. In the latter, the depleted national identity of the future Romans in the wash of the Trojan War must reformulate itself from the immaterial by focus on defining what it is not. In both instances, the lines between the inside and the outside are clearly drawn and redrawn. The two methodologies are in actuality the flipsides of wholeness another in clearly defining the accepted national identity and contrasting with it the danger and instability outside this narrow conception, the state is legitimized in doing violence on a massive scale to either avert the constructed outside threat or to further the im perialistic project so that these lines remain intact and unquestioned. In Utopia, the state imposes a culture of calibration to formulate a national identity that both defines and binds its citizens. The fifty-four towns of the republic are virtually identical with the same language, laws, customs, and institutions (More 70). Even the appearances of individuals resemble severally other with no distinctions in dress. This imposition of conformity serves to form a singular national identity that is artificial yet prevalent. As a result, the normalization is internalized by the people, becoming a cult of self-surveillance where the uniformity of physical appearances is superceded only by the uniformity of identity. The state succeeds in establishing a panopt... ...te literary Trojan Horse. As the representative diddle of the entire Western civilization, his work is guaranteed wide dissemination. However, the ambivalence of his literary conventions often traps the unwitting reade r and forces him or her to confront the barbarian undercurrents of Pax Romana. In essence, More and Virgil speak to the dangers of fantastic a normative national identity that actually becomes the flipside of a violent imperialist project. More importantly, they open up space for dissent by critiquing the seemingly impenetrable state system from the inside and thus exposing its infixed contradictions precariously built on a foundation of violence.Works CitedVirgil. The Aeneid of Virgil A Verse Translation. Trans. Rolfe Humphries. Ed. Brian Wilkie. New York Macmillan, 1987.More, Thomas, Sir. Utopia. Trans. Paul Turner. New York Penguin, 1965.