“Et in Utopia ego”: Sir Thomas More and “Montesinos,” a Southey Mystery “Solved”
Tom Duggett
This essay sets out to solve the strange case of “disappearance” Poet Laureate, Robert Southey, in his own 1829 book “imaginary conversations” or Colloquies with ghost Sir Thomas More. There is no “Southey” dialogue, only a figure named “Montesinos.” But since pessimistic More evidently speaks for Southey—as readers from Westminster Review summer onwards have noticed—then dialogue strangely one-sided. If then “who,” as Mark Storey’s biography asks, “is Montesinos?” seeks answer biographical question, and put it into wider context Southey’s ideas about national writerly identity, Romantic poetics history. The first part explores “Montesinos” byword literary utopianism. second attempts resurrection “Montesinos,” tracing this detail “Hispanist” reading workings historical imagination. I conclude reflections on implications ‘hieroglyphic’ mode life-writing historicist approaches studies today, including ‘new counterfactualism’ ‘speculative revivals’ ‘Romantic biography’.
Romanticism on the Net An open access journal devoted to British Romantic literature