Utopia as an Ecotopia across Literature and Economics: Sustainable Practices of Human-Nonhuman Relationality

This article builds on the growing ecocritical interest in Thomas More’s Utopia (1516) proposing a reading of the text as an “ecotopia”, understood herein through a transdisciplinary lens that combines literary and economic studies. This article examines how Utopia illustrates ethical forms of human-nonhuman relationality, focusing on three trajectories that remain relevant to contemporary debates on sustainability: the benefits of politics of the commons; the link between agrarian subsistence and land ethics; and the rejection of hunting and violence towards animals for recreational purposes. It also highlights resonances between contemporary strands of Catholic economic thought and the moral foundations of More’s work. I argue that these resonances underscore Utopia’s potential in negotiating anthropocentric and dualistic assumptions both in the context of early modern England and the present time, as well as in developing sustainable and ethical relational practices that respond to the Anthropocene.