Foreign Literature Studies ›› 2022, Vol. 44 ›› Issue (2): 17-29.

• Dialogue between Chinese and Foreign Scholars: Disease Writing in Literature • Previous Articles     Next Articles

Political Community Imagination in English Plague Era: Plague Control, Regimen and Harmonious Body in Utopia

Tao Jiusheng   

  • Online:2022-04-25 Published:2022-04-29
  • About author:Tao Jiusheng is a professor at the Faculty of Foreign Languages, Ningbo University (Ningbo 315211, China), specializing in English Renaissance literature and interdisciplinary studies of literature . Email: taojiush@163.com
  • Supported by:
    “Disease Consciousness and Nation-State Anxiety in the 16th- and 17th-Century English Literature” (16BWW056) sponsored by the National Social Science Fund of China

Abstract: At the beginning of the 16th century, England was hit by plague several times. The government adopted some preventive measures like quarantine, but still could not stop the disease from spreading. Therefore, physicians advised that people should follow an individualized regimen to prevent and treat the disease in natural body, and that, simultaneously, the government should prompt all institutions at different levels to function well in accordance with the harmony concept in classical medicine, so as to ensure the health of political body. What all this embodies is the political community's ideal of respecting difference and pursuing harmony. In Utopia, the citizens of the namesake island country plant herbs in their family garden and establish a perfect medical system to contain the plague in their cities. This constitutes a sharp contrast to the miserable medical situations in London that More, the author of the story, experienced when he was dealing with the plague as the acting administrator. More's participation in public affairs and his writing about a utopian nation display his determination to protect the collapsing national community. The Utopians read, with avidity, the books about the ancient Greek medicine, brought by More's good friend, and practice the ideas of body-building, regimen, and harmony in pursuit of the good health of natural body, political body, and global body. Also, they send officials to help neighboring countries' healthy development while still respecting their different ways of civilization. All this reflects England's imagination of the global (European) political community during the plague era.

Key words: Thomas More, Utopia, plague, regimen, harmonious body, political community

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