Moreana, no.

31-32 (Nov 1971): 107-122

DENYING THE CONTRARY : MORE'S USE OF LITOTES IN THE UTOPIA Thomas More's talk of a "neglectam simplicitatem" of language and style in his "libellum", his little book,l says a great deal about the apparently impromptu and effortless effect he wanted, and implies what it seems t o deny : a rhetoriul sophistication we are exploring in increasing detail. Two articles, in particular, have surveyed major areas of More's Latin style. In the one, R. Monsuez looks at the language and grammar of the Utopia in relationship to classical Latin texts and the ideals o f the humanists. In the second, Father Surtz, drawing specifically upon Erasmus' De copia, studies More f o m the point of view of Renaissance rhetoric, and finds a style shaped as a whole by More's awareness of his audience, other Christian humanists, and his form', a dial0~ue.2 Because of these studies it is now both possible and necessary t o look still more closely at the foreground of More's text. By isolating a single rhetorical turn of thought and phrase - in this instance, litotes, "in which a thing is affmmed by stating the negative of its opposite",' - and fine variations in its use, we can catch hold of what is in fact a far more intricate and subtle verbal structure and a denser, more distinctively literary texture, than the n m tor of the Utopia was always willing to admit, except by indirection. The most immediate and obvious fact about litotes in the U t o p i a is how often More uses it ; I count over one hundred and forty examples in the one hundred Latin pages of the Yale text.' It is hard, at &st, to 1. Sa More's prefatory letter to Peter Giles in Utopm, The Cbmplete Works of St. momas More, edd. Edward Surtz, and J.H. Hexter, IV (New Haven : Yale Univ. R e q 1965), 38/13 and 3813. Subsequent citations fmm the Utopm are from this, the Yale edition, unless otherwise specified. 2. R. Monsuu, 'Le Latin de Thomas More dnns "Utopia" ', A n d e s publitks pm b Fanclte des Lcttres et Sdmces Hutmines de Toulouse, Nouvelle SLrie, Tome 11, F m . I (Janvier, 1966). Wiban 3, 35-78 ;Edward Sum, "Aapccts of More's Latin Style in Utopia, " Studies in the Remimame, 14 (1 967). 93-109. Ilr Father Surtz writes, "Detailed and p&st&ing studiea need to be made of every element of style. . .", p. 107. 3. I have deliberately used a common handbook d e f i o n here ; see WiDirm Flint Thrall and Addison Hibbud, A Hmrdbwk to Litrmrtwe, rev. and enlarg8d C. Hugh Holman (New York : The Odywy &ss, 1960). "Litotes," p. 263. Richard A. Lanham, A Handlist oJ Rhetotid Temu : A Cui& far Stwknts of English L i t m h v e (Berkeley : Univ. of California Re=, 1968) is alro uaefi11. lie Encyelopemh of Poem and Pbmmcs, ed. Alex Rcminger et al. (Riaceton, NJ. : Rinaton University Reas, 1965), mdudes a w o r m bi%liopphy. 4. R. M o w z , 'Le Latin de Thomas More dans "Utopia" ', also comments on its frequency m a brief discusion of litotes, p. 48. In my o m count I have included such a p p n t l y conventional formulas as "haud dubie" and cecee where the uae of e e m at f m lesa rhetorical thnn logical. In either cssc the neetion of the litotes might s negative has an incremental effect, and it is, in practice, impossible to dnwr CL~IU line of division between rhetorical and logical uses of a f i r e m what is a f'iiond work.

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'

know how much t o make of this. Litotes was a common figure in the Renaissance, and the Tudor rhetorician, sensitive t o the state of his own language, and anxious t o enrich it, tended a t times t o dismiss it rather casually. As Hoskins says, "But why should I give examples of the most u s d phrases in the English tongue ? As, we say not the wisest man that ever I saw, for a man o f small wisdom. "I From this point of view, then, perhaps all we can surely say is that More is concerned with a functional and idiomatic, even colloquial, prose, rather than an ornate one ; litotes, whether in Latin or English, is not, usually, the showiest of figures? A closer look at More's text, however, suggests that these litotes cannot be seen simply in the light of a period style at its most ordinary or habitual, that they are, rather, a major element in the fine brushwork of the Utopia. The repetition, which allows us t o think of litotes as part of More's technique and style t o begin with, is too various, too purposeful. There is, t o myntion isolated grammatical features of the figure fust, a striking variation in the forms of negation which introduce the litotes. More commonly uses non -- there are over sixty instances of this. In addition,haud, an emphatic particle, and nec and neque are used at least twentyeight times. StilI other words of negation include haudquaquam, minus, ne, nemo, neuter, neutiquam, nihil, nihilo, forms of nullus, nunquam, nusquam, and tantum non. The construction as a whole is more varied still. Litotes based on adjectives and adverbs are certainly common, and More does occasionally repeat such adjectives as exiguus, insuavis, magnus and poucus, and a few adverbs, such as dubie, facile, minus (the most important single example of repetition), saepe, temere, and unquam. He likes an elegant construction the classical writers also liked - a negative followed by the negative form of an adjective, as in "non dissimiles" (128118-19), "non imperiti" (52/18), "non indoctus" (48/32), "non inhonesti" (146120-21), and so on. Yet litotic constructions based on nouns or verbs or both, so that a complete idea is twice negated, as when Raphael underscores the absurdity of punishing a thief and a murderer alike by concluding ..!hem0 est, opinor, qui nesciat" (74/4),["There is no one", I suppose, "who does not know"], are not i r ~ f r e ~ u e n t . ~ T his ere 1. John Hoskins, Directions for Speech and Style, ed. Hoyt Hudson (Princeton : Rinceton Univ. Press, 1935), p. 35. See too Thomas Blount, The Academie of Ebquence (London, 1654), p. 31. For a brief selection of litotes in English writings of the Renaissance, see Vere L. Rubel, Poetic Diction in the English Renaissance from Skelton through Spenser (New York : MLA, 1941), passim. 2. Obviously it is a characteristic mark of certain styles in literature, though. For two discussions of litotes as a period style, see Frederick Bracher, "Understatement in Old English Poetry", PMLA, 52 (December, 1937), 915-934, and Lee M. Hohder, "Litotes in Old,Norse", PMLA, 53 (March, 1938), 1-33. In spite of studies like these, litotes has been a kind of Cinderella f w r e in twentieth century rhetorical criticism. 3. Whenever the Yale translation suggests the o r i g ~ litotic ~ I construction, 1 have used it. In other cases, as here, where the litotes is rendered ... "surely everyone know ..." (75/5), 1 have translated or paraphrased the Latin text so as to preserve the negative features of the construction.

rather little, then, even grammatically, that indicates a formula, and a great deal that indicates not only a concern for variety as such but a h e awareness of effect and a lively alertness t o the idea played upon, so that we begin t o see why litotes is the not so simple rhetorical equivdent of what the Renaissance logician knew as obversion or equipollence - "expressing a thought by denying its contradictory".l Even more striking than the grammatical variety is the tremendous range and variety of effect which More achieves. There is the apparently casual simplicity of conversational remarks, as in persona More's granting of points t o Raphael : "Rofecto non ullde pronis inquam." (90/22), [" 'To be sure, not a very favorable one,' I granted". (91131)l ; or "Surdissimis inquam, haud dubie". (96131-32), I'''Deaf indeed, without doubt', I agreed" (97/39)]. By contrast there are such intricate sentences as the one which immediately precedes our introduction t o Utopia : "Nam Scyllas & Celenos rapaces, & Lestrigonas populiuoros, atque eiuscemodi immania portenta, nusquam fere non inuenias, at sane ac sapienter institutos ciues haud reperias ubilibet" (52131-5411). This sentence, with its double negations of thought, carefully though asymmetrically balanced and suspended, is perhaps the best single b i t of evidence of the sophisticated and extraordinarily complex effect More can accomplish with litotes. Understatement, emphasis, irony, a rapid movement of the mind tiom one extreme to the other, a kind of double vision : all are present in this cunning juxtaposition of all sorts of horrid monsters, in fact both fallacious and irnaginaq, yet so "real" they even have names, and the idealized abstraction of "well and wisely trained citizens" (53/39), who are imaginary for quite other reasons (which the Utopia will reveal). More turns different levels of reality upside down as he contrasts the former, which (translating the negatives literally) you almost never don't find, with the latter, whom by no means can you find wheresoever you please. Crucial here are the contrary perspectives and inverse directions built into the denials ; the fust moves towards always from never, the second towards never, not quite from always, but from the place you'dlike to think there would be some. But since the fvst d o not really exist, where will we find the second ? In Utopia, Noplace, in terms of the story. It does indeed seem that this sentence is the natural climax t o the section originally written as the introduction to Book 11, following Hexter's outline of the sequence in which More worked on the a c t d Utopia (xv-xxiii). As More uses litotes again and again, ,continuously affirming something by denying its opposite, the figure becomes, ultimately, a parad q p of the structure and method of the book as a whole, echoing, often in the briefest of syntactical units, the larger, paradoxical and double 1. Sister Miriam Joseph, Rhetoric in Shakespeare5 Time : Literary %ory of Renaisunce Europe (1947 ; rpt. New York : Harcourt, 1962), p. 323. Because litotes does involve logic, 1 found this study, which stresses the relationships the Renaissance saw between rhetoric and logic, particularly helpful.

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vision which will discover the best state of the commonwealth in an island called Noplace. The more immediate purpose and effects of litotes can rarely be apprehended in a single term, however. Few of More's are as simple as the "haud dubie" already cited, which, although admittedly somewhat formulaic, is not quite as simple as it seems, either. Inevitably one rhetorical effect merges more or less imperceptibly with another, sometimes changing before our eyes, because licotes is not a static figure. The understatement and the mental movement inherent in a process of negation d o w for a multiple effect which it becomes exceedingly difficult to generalize about, even though we can start where the sixteenth century did. The Renaissance, in particular, often thought of litotes as a kind of modesty f w e , a way to avoid boasting and to ingratiate oneself by way of understatement. Hence Sidney's famous comment near the beginning of his Apobgie for Poetrie : I wil,giue you a neerer example of my selfe, who (I knowe not by what mischance) in these my not old yeres and idelest times, hauing slipt into the title of a Poet ...".I Erasmus uses it no less wittily ;Folly's fust words in her encomium include an elegant and especially paradoxical variation of a common litotes, as she, Foolishness, explains that she is not ignorant of the world's opinion of her : "Utcumque de me vulgo mortales loquuntur, neque enim sum nescia ...".2 These are, in fact, simply the most explicit form of what Henry Peacham and other rhetoricians saw as its most common usage : "This form of speech tendeth most usually to praise or dispraise, and that in a modest forme and manner,"3 a definition which clearly reflects the Renaissance tendency B. Hardison to think of all literature in terms of a rhetorical formula 0. c a b "the theory of praise".4 Praise is an oddly general word to twentieth century ears ; we will need more precise terms. But many of the litotes in the Utopia can, of course, be read this way, just as the Utopia itself can be read both a praise "& optimo reipvblicae statv" and a dispraise or satire of men and societies as they exist. A clear, and one of the few examples of a modesty figure as such, is spoken, significantly, by persona More early in Book I, as he is about to meet Raphael : "Ergo inquam non pessime coniectaui" (48/28), [" 'Well then', said I, 'my guess was not a bad one' " (49134)l.

"...

1.

Sir Philip Sidney, An Agologie for Poetrie, in Elizabeth &tied Essay* ed.

G.Gregory Smith (1904 ;rpt. London : Oxford Univ. Press, 1964), 1, 150.
2. Lksiderii Emsmi Opem Omnia. IV (1703 ; rpt. Hildesheim : Georg Olms Verlegsbuchhandlung, 1962), 405. This example reveals more about Eroamus' understanding of litotes than hia tene comments in hia De copia, where he treat8 it as a kind of diminution ;see Opem Omnu. I, 22 [Lib. I, Cap. XXIX]. But see alro his comment8 on negation, 39-40 [Lib. I, Cap. LI]. 3. Henry P e a c h , The M e n of Eloqvence (London, 1593), p. 151 ;see Sister Miriam Joseph,Rhetoricin Shakespeare's rime, p. 323. 4. O.B. Hardison, Jr., The Enduring Monument :A Snrdy of the Idea of Raise in Renaiswce LitTheory and k t i c e (Chapel Hill : Univ. of North Carolina Press, 1962), p. 26.

Its presence here seems, primarily, to enlarge our dramatic sense o f this 6ctional More and his courtesy, yet it also, usefully, c a b attention t o his inference about Fbphael's occupation as "nauclerum" (48/29), an inference which is immediately qualified by Giles, who thereby transforms a realistic detail into something more symbolic : Raphael has sailed in search of truth. There are many instances of praise, though some are more straqhtforward than others. Among the simpler are sailors who are "non imperiti" [not unskilled] in sea and weather (52118) ; Cardinal Morton, in company "non difficilis" [not hard to please] (58123-24) ;a fool who occasionally said things which were "non absurda" [not absurd] (80/27) ; Plato, who "bene haud dubie" [without doubt well] foresaw the behavior of kings (86116) ; an academic philosophy which is "non insuauis" ["not without its charm" (9916-7)] among friends (9816). So, too, many elements of Utopian society are singled out for praise by subtle variations of litotic understatement which emphasize the less tangible. Their f w d , for instance, includes a supply of licorice "haud exiguam" [not a t all meagre] (11615) ; their buildings are "neutiquam sordida" [in no way mean1 (12014) ; their clothes are "nec ad oculum indecora" [not unbecoming to the eye] (12615). But their language is "neque uerborum hops, nec insuauis auditu. nec ulla fidelior anirni intervres est" [not lachng words, not without.charm to the ear, nor is there ;more faithful expounder of thought] (158113-14), while their music, by its harmony of feeling, sound, and sense, which "wonderfully affects, penetrates, and inflames the souls of the hearers" (23718-9) d o w s the Utopians "haud dubie" to far surpass us in this respect (23613). A conspicuous and humorous example of dispraise, using the word in its simplest sense, is ascribed to Cardinal Morton as he interrupts the verbose lawyer in Book I, neatly inverting the lawyer's tedious daim to make all clear "paucis" ["in a few words" (71/25)]. "Tace inquit Cardinalis : nam haud responsurus paucis uideris qui sic incipias" (7012224) ; " 'Hold your peace', interrupted the Cardinal, 'for you hardly seem about to reply in a few words if you begin thus' " (71130-32). More devastating in-its patent understatement E Fbphaells f d attack on the commonwealth, which heaps gifts on so-cded gentlemen and bankers, and other lazy men, but provides "nihil benigne" (240110) [not a t d generously] for "farmers, colliers, common laborers, carters, and carpenters without whom there would be no commonwealth at all" (241112-14). Yet a third example of litotic dispraise, the subtly understated "haud pauca" (244114) of the fictional More's final statement belongs here, though i t is subsumed in still more complex effects, for now the grounds of dispraise. expressed with conventions litotic irony, become ;he unconventional grounds of praise.lWhat results is as powerful and sophisticated in its way as the much briefer sentence on the Scyllas, the Celaenos, and other 1. For a slightly different approach to the irony of this pagPPge see Father Surtz, "Utopia as a Work of Literary Art", Yale Utoph, clii.

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terrifying monsters in Book I. At fust, persona More seems to temper his objections to the customs and laws of the Utopians, and speaks as the well-intentioned, and certainly the well-mannered gentleman he is, who Gnds "haud pauca" [not a few things] which bother him about the Utopian society. But his list of objections is really a reductio ad absurdum. As he singles out for special reproach "their common life and subsistence", (245122-23) because it eliminates the "exchange of money" (245123) and with it the nobility, splendor, and so on which are "in the estimation of the common people, the true glories and ornaments of the commonwealth" (245125-26). his whole argument is undercut. So the internal convention of dispraise, while itself ironic in its initial understatement, is ironically and dramatically reversed. More's "haud pauca", with all that follows it, magnifies and dramatizes effects which led Puttenham to call this figure "the Moderator". In his words, "... we temper our sence with wordes of such moderation, as in appearaunce it abateth it but not in deede, and is by the figure Liptote, which therefore I call the Moderator, and becomes vs many times better t o speake in that sort quallified, than if we spake it by more forcible termes, and neuertheles is equipolent in sence ...".'What Puttenham, and a host of other Renaissance rhetoricians are sensitive to, in part, is the emphasis which litotes somewhat paradoxically achieves by seeming to understate, moderate, or diminish its case by negating its contrary. Indeed, as Hoskins points out, "these figures are but counterfeits of amplification" ; in Thomas Blount's words, litotes (called diminution in this connection) "descends by the same steps that Amplification ascends, and differs no more then up Hill and downDale...".2 If we press Blount's analogy a bit, we can see one reason for litotes' appeal to writers like More or Sidney, for whom ars c e h e artem was a literary ideal. It allows for the apparently relaxed and easy descent, rather than the laborious climb. Understated instead of hyperbolic, it often seems to turn attention away &om itself, like its cousin, paralipsis, which emphasizes something by pretending to ignore it,3 and it can disarm potential opponents and avoid controversy ;yet it emphasizes whatever it touches. Emphasis through litotes is too ubiquitous in the Utopia t o need many more examples. We may not be altogether conscious of it each time that it underscores a concrete detail, but it becomes extremely noticeable, because of its order in the sentence, its construction, or its frequency - or d three - as More builds towards crucial points. Thus the actual narrative virtually starts with a litotes. Most translations obscure this ; the Yale translation talks of "certain weighty matters" (47110) which it places towards the latter part of a clause turned into a sentence. By contrast,
1. Gtorge Puttenham, 77te Arte of English Poesie (1 589 ; rpt. Menston, Eng. : The Scolar Ress, 1968), p. 153. 2. Hoskins, Directions for Speech and Style, p. 36 ; Blount. me Academie of Ebquence, p. 3 1. 3. Father Sum discuses paralipsis (preterition) in the Utopia, briefly ; see his "Aspects of More's Latin Style in Utopio", p. 104.

More's own words, almost at the very beginning of what is an exceptionally long sentence, "Qwm non exigvi momenti negocia quaedam" (46/8), are a key t o the tone of much of thesubsequent work by their diminution and an understatement which is played against regal superlatives : "inuictissimus" (4618-9), "ornatissimus", and "serenissimo" (46110). So too More ends his introductory sentence to the occupations of the Utopians with an emphatic litotes which brings home, without seeming to d o so, the place of agriculture in Utopia ; agriculture i s the one art "cuius nemo est expers" (124121-22), [which no one does not share in]. And More's last remarks include not only the dramatic "haud pauca" (244114) but the emphatic and ironic "non satis" (244125). , . ,. in reference to those men who are afraid they may not be thought wise enough unless they criticize the discoveries of others. Bv clusterinn litotes like these. More can achieve some verv brilliant effects indeed. .There are, for example, thirteen litotes in just over the fust four pages of the Utopia - all leading up to and preparing us for our fust introduction to the customs and institutions o f the Utopians. The practices of Utopia and other newly discovered countries are cunningly underscored by this sort of repeated understatement, subsequently embellished by marginal references, apparently added by Peter Giles and Erasmus.l Raphael's account of the Polylerites is a case in point. He tells us, in the space of a few lines, that this people, whose penal system distinguishes between the value of life and money, being therefore everything England's is not, is "neque exiguum, neque irnpru; denter institutum" (74121-22) ; that they are " n d a in re maligne" content with the fruits of their land (74125) ; that not often do they visit other countries, o r are they visited ["neque adeunt alios saepe, neque adeuntur". (74/26)] ; nor do they care t o push their frontiers ["neque fmes prorogare student" (74/27)] ; that they live "haud perinde splendide, atque commode" (74129-30) ; that even by name they are not "satis noti" (7611) [enough known] except to their closest neighbors. As these litotes follow several others on the same page, the reader is barraged by all sorts of negatives negated and confronted with a massive decoding process. So much that is in fact desirable is described in terms of the undesirable it is not - the Polylerites are not a small country ; they are not unwisely governed ; they are not eager for more land, or fame, or fortune ; they live by no means as splendidly as comfortably that here, and everywhere, we have to reckon with irony as well as emphasis bv diminution. Irony of some sort is, of course, inseparable %om the understatement and process of denied denial in litotes. As Hoskins explains, "... the former fashion of diminution sometimes in ironious sort goes for amplifiation ; as, speaking of a great person, no mean man, etc.'! He adds that "this is 1.
Edward Surtz, "Editions of Utopia", and n. 22/21,28@281.

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an ordinary f w r e for all sorts of speeches,"' and indeed litotic irony, although it says one thing and means another, is often thought t o be mild. Rosemond Tuve, for example, calls it "shght" because, she explains, "We simply intend to be taken as saying a mere modicum of what we mean".* Read this way, a litotes which describes the Polylerites as "populum neque exiguum, neque imprudenter institutum" (74121-22) would be ironic because they are, at least, "a nation that is large and well-governed" (75127-28). So when, in Book 11, we are told that "sunt tamen, hijque haud sane pauci" (224120-21) ["There are persons, however, and these not so very few" (225126-27)] who give up all learning and leisure to perform good works for others at the cost of pleasure in this life, we would notice the apparently simple irony of diminutionand denial. More than a very few (few ? some ? many ? a great many ? ) do this. More, however, obtains far more powerful and ironic effects, though perhaps nowhere so dramatically as in the concluding "haud pauca" passage, because of the radical contrast between two value systems, one concerned with well-being, the other with power, which stands behind so many of these litotes.' When, then, Raphael compares the justice (so-called) of other nations with that of the Utopians, and asks how it can possibly be just that the nobleman, the banker, or anyone whose work "non sit Reipublicae rnagnopere necessarium" (238124-25) [is "not very essential t o the commonwealth" (239132)) lives in mapificence, while the common man lives less well than the beasts of burden, the ironic understatement is painfully intensive. Again we hear a living voice. Irony is itself sometimes subsumed in a more complex effect which is satiric in force, a result of the alternatives which litotes as a figure requires. The denied negations do, in fact, frequently comment indirectly, but nevertheless pointedly, on aspects of life elsewhere. We have, on the most microcospic scale, examples of what A.R. Heiserman, citing Erasmus' definition of satire generally, calls the vio divers^.^ While, then, the speaker seems to be looking at some new world when he says, for inst&ce, that the Polylerites a r e not unwisely governed, the words he denies come closer to home. Again, the virtuous and loving behavior of those "haud sane pauci" (224120-21) in Utopia who pursue hard work for the well-being of others obliquely points to the very few in the known world who would dream of doing such a thing. Thus that general and ironic "awareness of contradiction between the two worlds" which Father Surtz speaks of in his introduction to the Utopia (clii) is made much more precise by way of litotic contrasts like these. 1. Hoskins, Directions for Speech and Style, p. 36 ;see also Peacham, 7he Corden of Eloqvence, pp. 15@151. 2. Rosemond Tuve, Elizabethan and Metaphysical Imagery :R e m i m e Pock and kntieth-Century &tics (1947 ; rpt. Phoenix ed., Chicago, Illinois : Univ. of Chiwo Press, 1961), p. 205. See too Heinrich Lausberg, Handbuch der litemkchen Rhetorik. I (Miinchen : Max Hueber Verlag, 1960), 304-305. 3. I owe the term "radical" to J.H. Hexter, of course ; see, in particular. his "A Window to the Future : The Radicalism of Utoph", cv-cxxiv in the Yale Utopia. 4. A.R. Heiserman, "Satire in the Utopio", PMLA. 78 (1963). 164.

Sometimes More uses litotic combinations of irony and satire, which are alsoof necessity emphatic --however understated they pretend t o be -, to lightly hit and run. Early in Book I, for example, we are told that Raphael found towns and cities and "very populous commonwealths" (5311) "non pessime institutas" (5211) [with not bad institutions]. At the bottom of the same page we learn that persona More and his friends did not ask for information about monsters, "quibus nihil est minus nouum" (52131) [than which there is nothing less new], a palpable hit at the taste for tall traveller's tales which, simultaneously, calls attention to the newness of Utopia. The Polylerites feed their prisoners "haud duriter" (76113) [by no means harshly], while the Utopians elect the tranibors annually but change them "haud temere" (122121) ["not ... without good reason" (123122-23)] and "never claim payment of most of the money" (149129) they rcceive for the goods they uade, because they think it "haud aequum" (148126) [not at all fair] to take away something they don't need when others do. Again, the Utopians go to war "non temere" (29014-5) ["not lightly" (20114-5)] ; their priests wear vestments of a material "non perinde preciosa" (234117-18) [not equally costly], for though the design and pattern are wonderful, no gold or precious stones are used. In each instance, of course, the litotes as a whole is an especially effective form of praise, the understatement making it less incredible. At the same time, the alternative to be denied is an oblique attack on the real world, its cruelty t o prisoners, its political corruption, its g e e d and usury, its love of war, the corruption of its church. At times More develops the satiric implications of litotes like these by making more explicit the contrasts between the Utopian world and Christendom. A superb instance of this occurs when Raphael's discourse turns to the Utopian attitude towards gold and silver. Those metals "quae caeterae gentes non minus fere dolenter ac uiscera sua distrahi patiuntur, apud Vtopienses, si semel omnia res postularet efferri, nemo sibi iacturam unius fecisse assis uideretur" (152115-18). Here Raphael, through More, actually talks of other nations, and underscores their greed by a powerful and painful litotic analogy ("non minus fere dolenter") between the loss of their entrails and the loss of their gold. In absolute contrast is the state of mind in Utopia, where, though all the gold was carried away, "no one would feel that he were losing as much as a penny" (1 531 20). Subsequent litotes in thissame passage are exploited, delightfully. for their possibilities as figures of satiric diminution. When Utopian children see no one but children ["non nisi pueros" (152/23)]using gems, they put them aside. And still another litotic contrast glances at our practices : "non aliter ac nostri pueri, quum grandescunt nuces, bullas, & pupas abijciunt" (152125-26). The "non aliter ac", [not otherwise than], which allows More to be explicit without being too obvious, also forces us to weigh, in our own minds, gold and our attitude towards it against the worthless trifles, the lockets and the dolls of our childhood. With

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greater subtlety, it satirically diminishes old to a mere nothing, a "bulla" or even a bubble, if More is half-punning ere. It is this analogy, of course, which leads directly to the splendidly absurd procession of the Anemolian ambassadors, loaded down with gold and gems, expecting applause, but mistaken for slaves (which they are, of a sort), a sight Raphael tells us, in yet another litotes, he found "non minus erat uoluptatis consyderare" (154118) ["no less delightful to notice" (155120)) than their misplaced pride in their fine clothing. Further litotes crowd the page as the temporary comedy of the procession is followed by a more vehement attack on the way of the world. There are the ambassadors, who were to discover that gold there was held "nec in minore contumelia quam apud se honore" (15614-5) [not in less contempt there than in honor among themselves], so that we have another contrast between Utopia and another nation (itself, however, fictional) which again ironically diminishes the value of gold. There are the Utopians, who wonder why anyone can possibly think he is more noble because the texture of his woolen clothing is finer, since... "ouis olim gestauit, nec aliud tamen interim, q u m ouis h i t " (156117-18) ["a sheep once wore the wool and yet all the time he was not other than a sheep" (157118-19)]. This litotes is both funny and satirically diminishing ; in more serious vein is a litotic reference to the blockhead, "nec minus etiam improbus quam stultus" (1 56122-23) [no less dishonest than foolish], who enslaves many wise and good men but will be enslaved in turn, when he loses his "great heap of gold coins" (157127) because of chance or a legal trick that no less than chance ["nihil minus ac fortuna" (156/26)] can "confound high and low" (157129-30). Or, most shocking litotes ofall, because the apparent diminution intensifies the horror of a value system which virtually makes gold its god, there is the madness (as the Utopians see it) of those who pay all but divine honors ["tantum non diuinos" (156/34)] to those who are rich. In passages like this one, then, litotes becomes an extremely powerful weapon with which More can attack the misguided values of the known world while praising Utopian customs. Still other effects are inherent in litotes, as More uses them. Ambiguity is one, for reasons both logical and psychological. The Renaissance was well aware of the logical complications and ambiguities which result when something is affumed by negating the contrary. Litotes and ten other figures (an important group in the Utopia, including antithesis, irony, paradox and paralipsis) can be specifically related to that topic of invention called opposites, of which there were thought to be four sorts in all : contraries, relatives, privatives, and contradictories. To affirm one contradictory is to deny the other, but litotes based on the first three categories may well be ambiguous. Though immediate contraries (faithlunbelief, for example) have no species between, so that "one or the other must be affirmedw,l mediate contraries do have a mediate or 1. Sister Miriam Joseph, Rhetoric in Shakespeare's Time, p. 322.

middle ground between the cwo extremes. "Not white" is the seemingly inevitable text-book example ; as Thomas Wilson says, "if a d o t h be not white, it is no reason to call it blacke. For it may bee blewe, greene, redd, russett ...".'Relatives (Isidore cites "few" and "many") andprivatives (sight and blindness, for example, for which a mediate could be an eye inflammation, according to 1sidore)Z can also be ambiguous. On these grounds such common litotes as "non pessime" (48128, 5211, 80/16), "non exigvi" (4618, 214/22), "haud pauca" (5412, 244/14), " b u d pauci" (21819, 224120-21), "nec pauci" (222/14), "haud multi- (15815). "baud saepe" (188/25), "non saepe" (184/29), or "haud semel" (21216) a r e lo@cally ambiguous. We may, at first, think of their opposites, just as we do with whiteblack, yet all have one or more species between. "Non pessime", for instance, has to move from worst through rather bad and bad even before it can move towards good, quite good, or the best, if i t does ; "haud pauci" may mean more than a few, some, or many, and "haud semel" [not once] is even more open ended. A second kind of ambiguity arises from the psycho logic^ peculiarity of negating a negation.3 As Jespersen has observed, "... it should be noted that the double negative always modifies the idea, for the result of the whole expression is somewhat different from the simple idea expressed positively." He calls attention to the same phenomenon which led Puttenham to call litotes the "Moderator", though h e interprets it differently, when he adds that "not uncommon is weaker than common,... the psychologic al reason being that the &tour through the two mutually destroying negatives weakens the mental energy of the hearer and implies on the part of the speaker a certain hesitation absent from the blunt, outspoken common...".4 In fact, since litotes as a rhetorical and literary technique not only moderates but intensifies, so that, as John Smith points out, " sometimes a word is put down with a sign of negation, when as much is signified as if we had spoken affimtively, if not more,"S it may be either stronger or weaker. But it is ambiguous. We can and must depend upon the context, of course.

...

1. Thomas Wilson, ?'he Rule of Reason ;Conteining the Art of Lo& [1551] (London, 1567), fol. 52", as cited in Sister Mirism Joseph, Rhetoric in Shukes-k Tfme,p. 322. 2. Isidorua, Etymologiafum, in PIlhologize cums complehu... Series bth, ed. Jacques Paul Migoe (Paris, 1844-1864), LXXXII, 153-154 [Book 11, ch. 31 : "De oppositis"]. 3. Litotic constructions should, logically, be par? of Empon's seventh type of ambiguity, but he does not discuss double negations, although he does comment usefully on negatives in general ; see William Empson, Seven o p e s of Ambiguity. 3rd ed. (London : Chatto and Widus, 1956),pp. 201214. 4. Otto Jespenen, Negation in English and Other Lunguages, i n Selected H t i W of Otto Jespersen (1917 ; rpt. London : George Allen & Unwin Ltd., n.d-hp.63. Cf. Ch. 24 in his The Philosophy of Gmmmur (1924 ; rpt. Allen & Unwin. 1948). 5. John Smith, The Mystery of Rhetorick Unveil'd (London, 1688), sig. ~ 4 .

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119

but even so we do have t o hesitate and decide t o what extent a particular litotes is moderating, t o what extent emphasizing, or better, attempt t o hold two apparently contradictory but equally real effects in our minds at the same time. 1 d o not think, pace Jespersen, that this necessarily "weakens the mental energy of the hearer". More probably it arouses it! requiring us t o linger over the construction and its context - hence its particular effectiveness as a figure of emphasis. But we are required to undergo a complex mental action ; if something is, for example, not uncommon, t o pursue Jespersen's example, we move from a common which isn't quite stated t o the uncommon which is, and then, because that is denied, back towards common again. But we do not usually know quite where t o stop, a process we can visualize this way :

[ c o m9 ~o ~]

UNCOMMON BUT "NOT UNCOMMON"

It is just this sort of ambiguous area which a recent cartoon exploits.2 A husband and wife are standing in front of what should be a welcome mat. But this mat reads, "not unwelcome", t o the chagrin of the wife. who says, " 'See what I mean ? You're never sure just where you stand with them' " . I n a larger sense we're never quite sure where we stand in the Utopia, either. It is, of course, a commonplace t o talk about ambiguity in the Utopia. But on the smallest syntactical level ambiguity does exist of a sort which can never be altogether resolved, and probably was not meant to be. For this ambiguity vivifies the text, arouses its readers, and agitates its points, however casually they appear t o be made, so that they neither evaporate nor solidify. We are constantly, though obliquely, teased by the many litotes aheady cited, not least those institutions "non pessime" (5211) which Raphael found in the new world, or persona More's "haud pauca" (244114) in his concluding speech. curiously, perhaps consciously, this last "haud pauca" contradicts the implications of another "haud pauca" early in Book 1 (54/2), which More uses in apparent and ironic antithesis t o the positive "multa" (5411) earlier in the sentence. Here More observes that Raphael did, of course, find many ["multa"] customs which were ill-advised in those new countries, "so he rehearsed not a few points from which our own cities, nations, races, and kingdoms may take example for the correction of their errors" (5512-4). We can sense inherent ambiguities and the potential spread of meaning in a given litotes from still another point of view by looking at various translations of the "non exigvi momenti negocia" (4618) of More's 1. 2.
See also Lk M.Hollander, "Litotes in Old Norse", p. 1

fust sentence. Ralph Robinson, thinking of litotes as an emphatic and intensifying . device, doubles the idea in a positive sense ; it becomes "weightye matters, and of greate importaunce". Gilbert Burnet, however, preserves the litotic implications, though sliihtly modifying the meaning, when he renders the litotes as "some Differences of no small Consequence". Closer to our period, H.V.S. Ogden, who chietly hears the moderating possibilities, turns the phrase into "some differences". In an attempt to reconcile the moderating impulse and the emphatic one, Paul Turner writes of "a rather serious difference of opinion".' The Yale translation settles for simple emphasis : "certain weighty matters" (47110). Burnet alone has left some of the ambiguities unresolved ;all the other translators have, in a sense, made our minds up for us. But what we gain in clarity we lose elsewhere. The alternatives, and therefore any possible irony, disappear, as does the ambiguity, and with that, the tension and movement of mind, so that nuances of meaning are also dissolved. In short, this litotes becomes far less significant, both in what it says and t h e way it says it, as an anticipation of the Utopia to come. For the phrase More writes certainly calls attention, however obliquely, to the kind of issue being argued about in the known world. He does not, admittedly, ~ spell out the details of what was a massive commercial p r ~ b l e m ,but he certainly says enough to reinforce our sense of the power and splendor and pride which activates almost all states (except, as we shall discover, Utopia). Indeed, "negocia" itself has commercial overtones which are very unlike the word Raphael W I N later use for what he thinks o f as the public welfare : "salutem publicam" (10418). By beginning, then, with "non exigvi momenti negocia" More is able t o raise, for just a moment, a question to which much of the subsequent discussion returns : what sortsofstate matters are trifling ? And what sorts are not ? But, whatever else it does, this fust "non" foreshadows the processes of negation and opposites which typify so much of the Utopia. Like all other negatives, only more so, because now the negative is itself negated, litotes speak of a habit of mind, a tendency t o see more than one side to a question.3 ~ntellectual, judicial, and persuasive,

Thedew Yorker, February 6, 1971, p. 36.

1. Ralph Robynson, trans. (1551) in m e Utopia of Sir Thomas More, ed. J.H. Lupton (Oxford : Clarendon Res, 1895), p. 21 ; Gilbert Burnet, trans., Utopia : Written in Latin by Sir Thomas More, &ncellor ofEngland :finslated into E d b h (London, 1684),p. 1 ;H.V.S. Ogden, ed. and trans., Utopia, by Sir Thomas More (New York : AppletonCenturyCrofts, 1949), p. 1 ;Paul Turner, trans., Utopia, by Thomas More (Hannondsworth, Middlesex, Eng. : Penguin Books Ltd., 1965). p. 37. 2. In this connection see the note to 4618,295 in the Yale Utopia. 3. More's use of negatives in general, though beyond the scope of this study, is an important element in his style (and his thought) and needs more investigation. In thinking about negatives, I found some terse comments by Ian Watt on the negative in Henry James illuminating ; he talks of what he calls "the right judicial frame of mind". See Ian Watt, 'The First Paragraph of m e Ambusndors : An Explication", Essays in Ctiticism, X (July, 1960), 250-74 ; rpt. in RhetoricaI A ~ l y s e s of Literacy Works, ed. Edward P.J. Corbett(New York : Oxford Univ. Ress, 1969), pp. 184203 ; the words I cite are on p. 190.

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they ask us to weigh and consider alternatives which the writer has himself considered. So each litotes does, then, link writer with reader, who tries to repeat, as best he can, the mental and judicial processes the figure so economically and often ambiguously encloses. As Puttenham says, litotes is a "sensable figure", one which "alter [ s ] and affect [ s ] the minde by alteration o f sensel'.l The persuasive bias of Renaissance rhetoric is implicit here. Where a modern writer in the ironic mode, like Herman Melville or Hemy James, will use this sort of negation to reveal hesitations, qualifications, uncertainties and ambiguous complications in the consciousness of the narrator or a major character in his fiction, More's fiction, though no less ironic, uses litotes, primarily, to affect and alter our minds. Yet it is also true that the alternatives were More's to begin with, so that litotes makes us simultaneously much more aware of his mind in action and certain divisions in it ; it reinforces our sense of More himself as one who, indeed, saw more than one side of a question.2 From this point of view, even such a seemingly conventional litotes as "haud dubie" (62125, 86/16, 96/32, 23613) or a more emphatic "Neque dubium est" (216127-28) or a "non dubito"(242116) implies a process of mental assessment on the part of the speaker. It suggests, as "to be sure" or "certainly" cannot, that someone has weighed the possibilities and reached a decision -- hence its usefulness as a persuasive figure. The same effect is multiplied in one of More's favorite litotic constructions, which, unlike mos;, does spell out (but qualify) its alternatives : some combination of a neeative with minus or minus auam. Like the "nec minus salutqis quam festiuus" of the title page, or the several non minus... quam litotes in the passage describing the Utopian way with gold, these constructions seem to ask us to weigh or try to balance different ideas or values, almost as if we were asked to find the balance point on a moving see-saw. The ideas are grammatically "equal",3 yet, often, the figure is weighted on one side ; there is, in other words, a kind of dynamic emphasis which requires that we hold the two elements both together and apart. It can startle, or it can result in ironic or satiric incongruities : things which shouldn't be "equal" are, but things which should be, too often aren't. Raphael's description of the robber, who is in no less danger "if merely condemned for theft" than "if he were convicted of murder as well" (7518-9) is an instance of the first sort ; his description of the Utopian way of providing for its citizens, an instance of the second : "Then take into account the fact that there is no less provision for those who are now helpless but once worked than for those who are still working" (239122-25). But most litotes in Utopia do not, in fact, spell out the alternatives in this way. With litotes like "non
2 '

pessime" or "haud pauca" it is almost as if we saw one side of a metaphysical see-saw. So the mind is stimulated or teased into the sort of action described earlier, having, often, to construct the opposite which is denied and hold on to contraries which it weighs, each against the other. And once again, though in a more oblique way, we discover a weighting, a persuasive action which often favors Utopian attitudes, however negatively they may appear to be described. As More says, in a fme piece of understatement, which also reveals an awareness of just how compIex this sort of question is, Raphael found nations "non pessime institutas" (5211). But with this we come back, full circle, to Peacham's point ;litotes does, indeed, "praise or dispraise, and that in a modeste forme and mannerN.lIn the Utopia, more ~recisely, it praises and dispraises, often almost simultaneously, since to deny something about Utopia is to affirm it, indirectly, of the world as we know it. More ended his book with a famous wish. My own present hope is a more modest one -- that somehow litotes be more systematically retained in translations of utopia, which have, usually, made a t best tepid attempts to preserve it, often converting a litotic construction to a simple positive. Obviously, syntactical patterns are difficult to turn from one language to another, and negatives are trickier still. But when, for example, More's final "haud pauca" (244114) becomes "many" (245/17), or the frequent litotic descriptions of the Polylerites and the Utopians, which comment via diversa on the way of this world, are transformed into straightforward descriptions, we lose the emphasis and the understatement, the irony and possible satire, and the ambiguity of the o r i p d . The complicated action of More's mind is coarsened, his meaning blurred, the energy and tension of a muscular prose relaxed. On a larger scale, we lose the cumulative effect of a device much repeated, and we have, t o o often, only one side of what is at least a two-sided vision inherent in every denial of the contrary. In More's hands, litotes was, in fact, a superlative tool for both the exceedingly polite gentleman, the fictional More, and the passionate visionary who had seen Utopia. Avoiding controversy, it constantly calls attention, without seeming to do so, to the purpose and values behind the countless delightful details with which More created both dialogue and discourse ; it truly is a figure of and for the mind. Intensive yet understated, emphatic, often drily ironic, sometimes humorous or wry, concealing tremendous energy in its apparent ease and frequent brevity, litotes is not the least of the rhetorical figures * in the vision and satire we call Utopia.
1.

Peacham, 7'he Garden o f Ebqvence, p. 15 1. Elizabeth McCUTCHEON

Puttenham, T k Arte of English Poesie, p. 148. An intensive example of a reading on these lines is David Bevington, 'The Dialogue in Utopia : Two Sides to the Question", S.P., 58 (1961), 496-509. Compare and contrast with this J. H. Hexter, More's Utopio : 7'he Biography of an Idea (1952 ; rpt. Torchbook ed., New York : Harper. 1965). 3. Jespersen, Negation in English and 01her languages, discusses non minus quam briefly. pp. 83-84.

1. 2.

University of Hawaii

FROM A NONJESUIT CONFRERE AND COUEAGUE

a

From Rome, via San Silvestro 23, on September 30, the feast of "holy Saint Jerome", the Rw. John hlaguire, C.S.C., whose lateat article (to appear soon in Renaissance Quarterly) has precisely to do with Ekasmus' Hieronymi Stridonensis Vita, sent us a letter from which we excerpt a few paragraphs : Dear Father Marc'hadour, ... Thank you wry much for the circular and the pink reminder. The enclosed check will cover this year's copies of Moreana, to be sent to me in Rome, as well as a year's subscription on behalf of the Loyola Rome Center Library. I look forward to the Utp& special. I bet Father Surtz wiU be terribly embarrassed by the honour done him. A Jesuit colleague of many years wrote to me recently : "Fr. Surtz dislikes any personal expression of praise or appreciation of his high qualities, especially if they were to appear in public, so that it is always better to understate his case than overstate it. " Father Surtz's personal and intellectual influence unquestionably extends far beyond what any listing of his works or of the theses he directed can show. Former students tell of the immense care with which he corrected their papers. Colleagues wa*ly recount his willingness to assist them in their own research and witing. Administrators speak of the help he generously gave them. ("If you asked his advice orpresented a problem to him, you would always receive, within twenty-four hours, a well thought-out and researched answer in writing. ") I would have loved t o contribute to this ~ e s s c h r i fmyself, t but my own research this p t year has been on Erasmus. However, I haw just finished teaching Utopiq in my Renaissance literature class and was once again reminded of the immense debt I and so many other teachers owe Father Surtz. Though I have respected his scholarship fiom afar for many years, my personal acquaintance with him is of recent origin and our meetings have been few. k t year, m y first at Loyolo University, he was on sabbatical leave, so I had few opportunities to see him, a few glimpses at a distance as he was hurrying across campus, just a brief chat before an important departmental meeting. And this year he is in Chicago while I find myself at Loyola's Rome Center - a progrom sponsored by Loyola University of Chicagofor several hundred studentsfiom its own campuses andfiom more thun seventy-five other American universities. The students spend their junior year in this ancient home of Western and Christian Civilization. But everyone to whom I have spoken here in Rome, where Father Surtz taught afew years ago, as well as in Chicago, has both immense respect and genuine affection for him. His energy, industry and p e r ~ ~ ~ l kindness are invariably mentioned. ("His own life exemplifies the kind of Christian humanism found in St. Thomas More") ... With best personal wishes,
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