City of the Sun by Tommaso Campanella is one of the earliest utopian novel — and one of the rarest , since only 20 copies live . One of those has just come into the library at UC Riverside , where you’re able to read it if you have California ID . ( And read Latin . )
complete in 1602 during Campanella ’s incarceration for heresy , City of the Sun is a duologue between a Genoese ocean - captain and his innkeeper , the Grand Master of the Knights Hospitaller . The police captain tells of his voyage to the City of the Sun , a far - away property in Taprobrane , “ right away under the equator . ” And he describes the urban center , as student Nicole Pohlputs it , as a “ communist theocracy . ” In which union is illegal , and everybody is heteroicous , sort of .
As Pohl writes in an essay inthe book The Architecture of the Museum :
The Prince Prelate is called the Sun or Metaphysician . He is assisted by three Princes – Pon , Sin and Mor – who regulate military occasion , science and the artwork , procreation , instruction and eugenics with the financial aid of a range of civic handmaid . The government of the City of the Sun is clearly totalitarian . Whilst there seems to be no publish composition , the juridical organisation is based on a set of ethical law expose on a copper crustal plate on the central tabernacle building . Eugenics and the public Education Department of minor are ground on principles of collectivity and individual answerableness . The pupils even live next to the schools so they can continuously be supervised by the teachers . There is no individual property , and all customary institutions such as the sept and married couple are dissolve on the undercoat that any grade of individual assets ( include a married woman ) is counterproductive to the collective . Offenders to this basic code are not punished in any traditional sense but are re - civilize to strengthen their collective intent and selfcontrol . The custom of universal confession serves to enhance the internalisation of the dominion and regulations of the City of the Sun . ‘ The emphasis is less on reduce the relative incidence of criminal offence , than on making the violator aware of his or her province to the community .
riverbank ’s press release cite Professor Rob Latham , who study skill fiction , as saying :
“ A forerunner of the countercultural utopia of the 19th and 20th century , it gives us tantalizing glance of an emerging modern universe … Despite its seeming piousness , the book was controversial , as were Campanella ’s beliefs more generally , and he spent decades in prison and several sitting on the interrogator ’s rack for get married heretical scene . But his sight exist in ‘ City of the Sun ’ — a study that , in its first edition , is extremely rarefied — and having a written matter now at UCR further confirms the Eaton Collection ’s standing as the preeminent inquiry archive on science fiction and utopian writing in the world . ”
A Riverside student who reads Latin and studies skill fiction is writing an clause about City of the Sun for the journal Science Fiction Studies , total Latham .
[ viaHighlander News ]
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