Alternative Worlds Imagined, 1500-1700

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-viii

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2. Introduction

   • J. C. Davis

   Pages 1-13

3. Radicalism in a Traditional Society: The Evaluation of Radical Thought in the English Commonwealth 1649–1660

   • J. C. Davis

   Pages 15-38

4. Reassessing Radicalism in a Traditional Society: Two Questions

   • J. C. Davis

   Pages 39-74

5. Conquering the Conquest: The Limits of Non-Violence in Gerrard Winstanley’s Thought

   • J. C. Davis

   Pages 75-91

6. Formal Utopia/Informal Millennium: The Struggle Between Form and Substance as a Context for Seventeenth-Century Utopianism

   • J. C. Davis

   Pages 93-110

7. Against Formality: One Aspect of the English Revolution

   • J. C. Davis

   Pages 111-138

8. Religion and the Struggle for Freedom in the English Revolution

   • J. C. Davis

   Pages 139-171

9. Thomas More’s Utopia: Sources, Legacy and Interpretation

   • J. C. Davis

   Pages 173-196

10. Goodbye to Utopia: Thomas More’s Utopian Conclusion

    • J. C. Davis

    Pages 197-204

11. James Harrington’s Utopian Radicalism: Oceana and the Narration of an Alternative World

    • J. C. Davis

    Pages 205-226

12. Conclusion

    • J. C. Davis

    Pages 227-240

13. Back Matter

    Pages 241-246

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This book address the relationship between utopian and radical thought, particularly in the early modern period, and puts forward alternatives approaches to imagined ‘realities’. Alternative Worlds Imagined, 1500-1700 explores the nature and meaning of radicalism in a traditional society; the necessity of fiction both in rejecting and constructing the status quo; and the circumstances in which  radical and utopian fictions appear to become imperative. In particular, it closely examines non-violence in Gerrard Winstanley’s thought; millennialism and utopianism as mutual critiques; form and substance in early modern utopianism/radicalism; Thomas More’s utopian theatre of interests; and James Harrington and the political necessity of narrative fiction. This detailed analysis underpins observations about the longer term historical significance and meaning of both radicalism and utopianism.

• utopia
• Thomas More
• radical politics
• English Revolution
• subversive thinking

• Glasgow, United Kingdom

  James Colin Davis

J. C. Davis is Emeritus Professor of History at the University of East Anglia, UK. His previous publications include Utopia and the Ideal Society (1981), Fear, Myth and History (1986), Oliver Cromwell (2001) and numerous essays on the history of utopian and radical thought. He is currently  co-editing Textual Moments in the History of Political Thought (2018) with John Morrow. 

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