Books on Utopia Published in Italy in 2016 and During the First Semester of 2017

On December 29, 1886, in Florence, Pope Leo XIII beatified Thomas More together with other English martyrs from the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. The canonization happened on May 19, 1935, conducted by Pope Pius XI at Vatican City. On October 31, 2000, also at Vatican City, Pope John Paul II proclaimed Thomas More "the heavenly Patron of Statesmen and Politicians," praising him for being capable of conciliating the natural and the supernatural. Perhaps it is exactly this capacity of amalgamating the natural and supernatural that made it possible for More to create not only an entirely innovative book but also an entirely new literary form. However, the connection between More and Italy goes beyond the religious sphere and the fact that the author chose to write his masterpiece in the language of the Roman Empire. Thomas More can be regarded as one of the most notorious Renaissance humanists, and Utopia is itself a book usually regarded through its relationship with Italian humanistic ideals.

Bearing this context in mind, the variety of works regarding Utopia published in Italy is not surprising, especially after the celebration of five hundred years since the first publication of Thomas More's book. Throughout the year 2016, forty-four books were published, while twenty-two titles were printed in the first part of 2017. These numbers were found by researching the Istituto Centrale per il Catalogo Unico delle Biblioteche Italiane e per le Informazioni Bibliografiche (which is a general catalog that encompasses the different catalogs of national libraries throughout Italy).

Curiously, some of the most important centers of Renaissance humanism—Rome, Naples, and even Florence—reappear now, centuries later, as some of the most active places for the publication of utopian works. However, it is a publishing house from Milan that stands out with the highest number of publications in the field of utopian studies: Franco Angeli. Indeed, Milan emerges as the city with the greatest amount of titles published, with seventeen in total, followed by Rome, with fourteen publications. Other places worth highlighting are Naples and the region of Tuscany, especially Florence and Pisa. On the other hand, of all the books that appeared throughout the year 2016 and the first semester of 2017, only one came from a university press: Eduardo Grillo's Post War Dream(s): L'Informale e l'Utopia della Comunicazione (Postwar Dream[s]: Informalism and the Utopia of Communication),¹ published by Morlacchi University Press in Perugia.

The diversity of the works published regarding Utopia in general is worth highlighting. From romance and poetry to comics, from art catalogs to coloring books (Utopia is the ideal city to color, after all),² from short articles to voluminous books, Utopia was referred to in many different ways. For this review in particular, fictional works were not considered, but it is necessary to call attention to two new editions of More's Utopia published in 2016. The first one was edited by Francesco Ghia, a professor of philosophy at the University of Trento, and translated by Lia Guardini,³ whereas the second one was edited and translated by Ugo Dotti, who also wrote an interesting introduction to the edition.⁴ Apart from these publications, only two more books about Thomas More were published in this period of time: a translation of Jack H. Hexter's More's Utopia: The Biography of an Idea from 1952 and Luca Mori's Utopie di Bambini: Il Mondo Rifatto dall'Infanzia (Children's Utopias: The World Re-created from Its Infancy).⁵ This was, in fact, a surprise, since we would expect more books about Thomas More on the anniversary of his pièce de résistance, especially at the birthplace of the Renaissance. Nevertheless, even if these books do not deal directly with More's Utopia, they seem to bear the five hundred years since its publication constantly in mind.

In order to organize and better understand the context of the publications regarding Utopia in Italy, the titles were divided into thirteen main groups, the preeminent ones being the one on...