Kristine Vermillion

June 15-16, 2013 

Finch and Bacon

      One of the aspects of utopian literature that interests me is the role that Millennialism plays in literary and historical utopias. Joshua Schuetz was interested in the same subject in his Research post titled “The Role of Religious Imagination in Utopian Thinking.” Obviously this aspect is too broad and complicated of a topic to explore within the confines of this research assignment. To proceed with my research I find it is imperative to qualify what my interests are exactly.  Millennialism carries with it the burden of eschatological thought, theological doctrine and end-times speculation. I am not primarily interested in this aspect of the term. What I am interested in is the prevalence of literary conventions that originate in the Biblical texts in the Utopian literature we have read. The presence of both Genesis and Revelation on the course syllabus corroborates this idea. The most provocative and prevalent theme (convention) that appears and reappears constantly is the idea of the Garden of Eden and the utopian vision of a return to a garden state. This idealized garden state is pictured in the last chapters of the book of Revelation in regards to the Millennial Kingdom and the vision of the coming new heavens and earth. This garden theme is in More’s Utopia, it is in Gilman’s Herland, it is an important aspect of Callenbach’s Ecotopia, and it is also a prevalent idea in Atwood’s Oryx and Crake.

      Other common elements of the Millennial writings are worth mentioning, because these are the technical details that make up utopian communities. Included in the writings prophesying the messianic kingdom (Isaiah 65:17-25, Micah 4:1-5) are topics that include children, sickness and disease, enjoyment of labor, freedom from oppression, communal peace locally, nationally and internationally, housing, fruitfulness of crops, trees and land and the peacefulness of the animal kingdom. They deal with the righteous rule of the people and the quick administration of justice. Elsewhere, there are references to the character quality of the inhabitants and even the types of clothing they will wear.  In effect, there is freedom from poverty and want as the “poor inherit the earth.” All of this worthwhile human endeavor and achievement are real noteworthy aspirations of human societies, but they are also deeply religious ideas. These utopias, to borrow the title from one of Harold Bloom’s books, seem to operate in The Shadow of a Great Rock, and the rock is the Biblical text. The parallels are striking, and they are found in both utopias and dystopias alike. In dystopias, the best example of this idea in our reading list is Atwood’s character Jimmy, also known as Snowman, whom we find in the wilderness struggling to survive Crake’s creations and his Armageddon of judgment on mankind.

      So why is the title of this post “Finch and Bacon?” While perusing the history of the various literary utopias and tracing the millennial aspects of them, I noticed a pattern that begs the question: Why was it ok to embed Millennialism into works of utopic fiction, but dangerous to speak with conviction about associated Biblical truths and ideas—all the while in supposedly “Christian” nations? I first came across it while reviewing the history of Sir/Saint Thomas More. The fact that More lived, worked and wrote during the reign of Henry the VIII and the upheaval of Martin Luther’s theses is intriguing enough to warrant inquiry. However, it was the conditions of his death that brought the pattern I noticed to the forefront.  More’s Utopia contains scathing critiques of his country and its leaders in every way, yet because it was a work of literature written as a hypothetical, he wasn’t punished. However, later on when he stood on religious principle and ideology and refused to play the game, he was condemned and lost his head. This to me validates the power of literature, especially when dealing with utopian and religious ideas. In the fictive Utopia More could say more than he could safely say elsewhere.

      While reading about Francis Bacon’s work, New Atlantis, I observed the same pattern.   Bacon, who is commonly known as the father of modern science, lived a similar life to that of Thomas More. He was involved in politics and served in various state positions, and he too wrote a utopian fiction. His utopia is free from any eschatological millennial content (the preachy kind), yet most of the elements of the millennial kingdom are dealt with nonetheless.  Bacon’s work was his attempt to show how his practical application of natural philosophy, i.e. science, could be used to enhance all aspects of life. His idea was that this “reinformation would lead to a great advancement in science and a progeny of new inventions that would relieve mankind’s miseries and needs” and his aim was “a partial returning of mankind to the state it lived in before the fall, restoring its dominion over creation, while religion and faith would partially restore mankind’s original state of innocence and purity” (Wikipedia).

In his article titled Francis Bacon’s “Jewish Dreams”: The Specter of the Millennium in New Atlantis, Travis DeCook explores the “radical forms of millenarianism and messianism, alluded to in New Atlantis, which put the relationship between God, nature, and earthly political order under new scrutiny” (115). DeCook explores the very deep presence of the Jewish texts in Bacon’s work, and how they permeate most aspects of the “Great Insaturation” that Bacon was imagining through his fiction.  DeCook was interested in “the way that fiction allowed Bacon latitude to portray a Jewish community and its beliefs and thereby to draw on various dynamics of Christianity’s relationship to Judaism in a manner keyed to specific polemical purposes” (118).  DeCook’s thesis is specifically: “In New Atlantis Bacon invokes Jewish messianism—a belief with especially dangerous and topical associations during this time—as a means of distinguishing and legitimizing his own understanding of a future prophesied transformation of the social and natural world” (119, emphasis my own).  Bacon obviously had an agenda in his writings, and his ideas were not free from religious ideas. In fact, he used millennial ideas and Christian concepts to further his agenda, but his fiction provided him a safe zone to operate. They were tools of communicating his ideas not points of a sermon. He used his fiction to argue that Christianity doesn’t forbid the investigation into nature, and that science should seek knowledge “not for pleasure contentions, superiority over others, profit, fame, or power, but for the benefit and use of life, and that they perfect and govern it in charity” (Wikipedia). He was a scientist seeking to use science to alter the conditions of living for the betterment of mankind. In this respect he is Crake’s intellectual great grandfather.  Bacon’s work was a literature of ideas that he used to provoke the church and the government in the direction he wanted them to go.  He was a progressive of sorts, and he apparently was able to evade conflict. It was probably quite helpful that New Atlantis wasn’t published until after his death. A contemporary of his, however, didn’t fare as well.

An English lawyer and politician by the name Sir Henry Finch (1585-1625) seemed to know a lot about millennial ideas and had the gumption to publish a book in 1621 titled “The World’s Great Resaturation, or Calling of the Jews, and with them of all Nations and Kingdoms of the Earth to the Faith of Christ.” The story goes that as a result the king, King James I, branded the work as libel and had him arrested.  Finch was freed only after “renouncing all portions of his work that might be construed as derogatory to the sovereign and apologizing for having written unadvisedly” (Wikipedia).  These similar millennial ideas, not contained within the confines of fiction were deemed dangerous and unacceptable. This is a small example that provides evidence for the merit of my question.

The best reason that I have found so far that seems to answer my question is located in an essay by J.C. Davis titled “Formal Utopia / Informal Millennium: The Struggle between Form and Substance as a Context for Seventeenth-century Utopianism.” As the title suggests, Davis reasons that the Utopian fiction was accepted because it paralleled the forms and formalisms of the society closely enough so that it wasn’t considered a true hazard to their formalist ways. On the other hand, Millennial expectation “found human form irrelevant and brushed it away. Our nature is transcended and redeemed. But as the millennium, contemptuous of fleshy contrivance, is antiformalist, informal, so utopia responds to a world of deficient formality with improved and perfected form. In utopia, flawed and recalcitrant substance is constrained, ordered and harmonized by formality” (Davis 21).   If I understand it correctly, the idea is that utopian contrivances are alright because they are still within the framework of man working within the formalities of society to fix the problems of society. The presence of millennialism in their works is just the result of the conventions of their society and of its usefulness with its myriad of literary tropes. The purely religious and ideological millennial teachings operated on a different plane, one that man can’t control or do anything with. In this realm, the teachings are a specter that men, in general, want to avoid, and that kings, in general, do not seem to appreciate.    

The conclusion that Davis gives at the end of his essay ends with the observation that there is a very interesting story to be told about the historical progression of utopian fiction and the role religious doctrine and imagination play in it. His concluding paragraph which I am including below alludes to the reason for my inquiry: the topsy turvy disparity between the past and the present use of utopian fiction and millennial tropes and how it happened.

Seventeenth-century English society was gripped by a tension of an intensity that was unparalleled even in the Europe of the general crisis. On the one hand, there was a social consensus on the value of law and its formalities as a guarantee of freedom and as a protection from the arbitrary, the willful and the tyrannical. On the other hand, society was infused with a desire to submit, in an apocalyptic moment, to the unknown, apparently inconstant and arbitrary will of a God whose service required the casting aside of fleshly formalities and carnal institutions. Between utopian formality and millennial informality there could be no compromise. There is a story to be told, a history to be written, of how we have travelled from that epic conflict to a situation in which we despise formality but have no God; in which we seek liberty but are suspicious of law; in which we demand protection but distrust authority; in which we see utopia as a disposable vehicle of protest, but fear apocalypse, if not the millennium. There is a story to be told… (Davis 32).

With that concluding remark, I am left with the general conclusion that I keep coming to over and over again: the power of a good story is immeasurable. A work of literature can go places sermons and lectures could never go—providing a space for interaction that might otherwise be completely unattainable.

Works Cited

Davis, J.C. “Formal Utopia/Informal Millennium.” Utopias and the Millennium. Reaktion Books. London, 1993. 17-32.

DeCook, Travis. “Francis Bacon’s ‘Jewish Dreams’: The Specter of the Millennium in New Atlantis.” Studies in Philology. Vol. 110, Number 1, Winter 2013, pp. 115-131. Univ. North Carolina Press, 2013. 115-131.

“Henry Finch.” Wikipedia: The Free Encyclopedia. Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. 27 April 2013. 13 June 2013. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Finch

“Francis Bacon.” Wikipedia: The Free Encyclopedia. Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. 14 June 2013. 14 June 2013. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Bacon

Schuetz, Joshua. “The Role of Religious Imagination in Utopian Thinking.” Literary and Historical Utopias Website for Dr. Craig White. http://coursesite.uhcl.edu/HSH/Whitec/LITR/5439utopia/models/resposts/2009/