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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 andstyle in his "libellum", his little book, l says a great deal about the appar-ently imp romptu and effortless effect he wanted, and implies what itseems to deny : a rhetoriul sophistication we are exploring in increasingdetail. T wo articles, in particular, have surveyed major areas of More'sLatin style. In the one, R. Monsuez looks at the language and grammar ofthe U t op i a in relationship to classical Latin tex ts and the ideals of thehumanists. In the secon d, Father Surt z, drawing specifically upon Erasmus'De copia, studies More f o m the point o f 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 di al0~u e.2 Because of thesestudies it is now both possible and necessary to look still more closelyat the foreground of More's text. By isolating a single rhetorical turn ofthought and phrase - n this instance, litotes, "in which a thing is affmmedby stating the negative of its opposite",' - and fine variations in its use,we can catch hold of what is in fact a far more intricat e and subtle verbalstructure and a denser, more distinctively literary texture, than the n m -tor of the U t op i a was always willing to admit, except by indirection.

The most immediate and obvious fact about litotes in the U t o p i ais how often More uses it ; count over one hundred and forty examplesin the one hu ndred Latin pages of the Yale text.' It is hard, at &st, to1. Sa Mores prefatory letter to Peter Giles in Utopm, The Cbmplete Works o fSt. 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 publitkspm b Fanclte des Lcttres et Sdmces Hutmines de Toulouse, Nouvelle SLrie,Tome 11, Fm. I (Janvier, 1966).Wiban 3, 35-78 ;Edward Sum, "Aapcctsof More'sLatin Style in Utopia," Studies in the Remimame, 14 (1 967). 93-109. Ilr FatherSurtz writes, "Detailed and p&st&ing studiea need to be made of every elementof style. . ",p. 107.3. I have deliberately used a common handbook d e f i o n here ; see WiDi rmFlint Thrall and Addison Hibbud, A Hmrdbwk to Litrmrtwe, rev. and enlarg8dC. Hugh Holman (New York : The Odywy &ss, 1960). "Litotes," p. 263.Richard A Lanham, A Handlist oJ R h e t o t i d T em u : A Cui& far Stwknts ofEnglish L itm hv e (Berkeley : Univ. of California Re=, 1968) is alro uaefi11.lie Encyelopemh of Poem and Pbmmcs,d. Alex Rcminger et al. (Riaceton,NJ . : Rin ato n 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 onits frequency m a brief discusion of litotes , p. 48. In my o m count I have includedsuch ap p n t ly conventional formulas as "haud dubie" and cecee where the uae oflitotes might seem atfm lesa rhetorical thnn logical. In either cssc the neetion of thenegative has an incremental effect, and it is, in practice, impossible to dn wr CL~IUline of division between rhetorical and logical uses of a f i r e mwhat isa f'iio nd work.

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10 8 ELIZABETH McCUTCHEONknow how much to make of this. Litotes was a common figure in theRenaissance, and the Tudor rhetorician, sensitive to the state of his ownlanguage, and anxious t o enrich it, tende d at times to dismiss it rathercasually. As Hoskins says, "But why should I give examples of the mostu s d phrases in the English tongue ? As , we say not the wisest man thatever I saw, for a man of small wisdom."I From this point of view, then,perhaps all we can surely say is that More is concerned with a functionaland idiomatic, even colloquial, prose, rather than an ornate one ; itotes,whether in Latin or English, is not, usually, the showiest of figures?

A closer look at More's text, however, suggests that these litotescannot be seen simply in the light of a period style at its most ordinary orhabitual, that they are, rather, a major element in the fine brushwork ofthe Utopia. The repetition, which allows us to think of litotes as part ofMore's t echnique and sty le to begin with, is too various, too purposeful.There is, to myntion isolated grammatical features of t he figure fust, astriking variation in the forms of negation which introduce the litotes.More commonly uses non -- there are over sixty instances of this.In additi on,hau d, an emphatic particle, and nec and neque are used atleast twe ntye ight times. StilI other words of negation include haudqua-quam, minus, ne, nemo, neuter, neutiquam, nihil, nihilo, forms of nullus,nunquam, nusquam, and tantum non. The constructi on as a whole is morevaried still. Litotes based on adjectives and adverbs are certainly com mon,and More does occasionally repeat such adjectives as exiguus, insuavis,magnus and poucus, and a few adverbs, such as dubie, facile, minus (themost important single example of repetition),saepe, temere, and unquam.He likes an elegant c onstruction the classical writers also liked - a negativefollowed by the negative form of an adjective, as in "non dissimiles"(128118-19), "non imperiti" (52/ 18), "non indoctus" (4 8/32 ), "non' nhonesti" (146120-21), and so on. Yet litot ic constructions based onnouns or verbs or both, so that a complete idea is twice negated, as whenRaphael underscores the absurdity of punishing a thief and a murdereralike by concluding ..!hem0 est, opinor, qui nesciat" (74/4),["There isno one", I suppose, "who does not know"], are not ir~ fr e~ ue nt .~ Th er es1. John Hoskins, Directions for Speech and Style, ed. Hoyt Hudson (Princeton :Rinceton Univ. Press, 1935), p. 35. See too Thomas Blount, The Academie ofEbquence (London, 1654), p. 31. For a brief selection of litotes in English writings ofthe Renaissance, see Vere L. Rubel, Poetic Diction in the English Renaissance fromSkelton 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, "Under-statement in Old English Poetry", PMLA, 52 (December, 1937), 915-934, and LeeM.Hohder, "Litotes in Old,Norse", PMLA, 53 (March, 1938), 1-33. In spite of studieslike these, litotes has been a kind of Cinderella fwre in twentieth century rhetoricalcriticism.3. Whenever the Yale translation suggests the o r i g ~ ~ Iitotic construction, 1 haveused it. In other cases, as here, where the litotes is rendered ... "surely everyoneknow..." (75/5), 1 have translated or paraphrased the Latin text so as to preservethe negative features of the construction.

LITOTES :DENYING THE CONTRARY 10 9rather li ttle, then, even grammatically, that indicates a formula, and a greatdeal that indicates not only a concern for variety as such but a h e ware-ness of effect and a lively alertness to the idea played upon, so that webegin to see why litotes is the not so simple rhetorical equivdent of whatthe Renaissance logician knew as obversion or equipollence - "expressinga thought by denying its contradictory".l

Even more striking than the grammatical variety is the trem endousrange and variety o f effect which More achieves. There is the apparentlycasual simplicity of conversational remarks, as in persona More's gra ntingof points t o Raphael : "Rofect o non ulld e pronis inquam." (9 0/2 2),[" 'To be sure, not a very favorable one,' I granted". (9113 1)l ; or"Surdissimis inquam, haud dubie". (96131-32), I''Deaf indeed, withoutdoubt', I agreed" (9 7/39)]. By contrast there are such intricate sentencesas the one which immediately precedes our introduction to Utopia :"Nam Scyllas & Celenos rapaces, & Lestrigonas populiuoros, atqueeiuscemodi immania portenta, nusquam fere non inuenias, at sane acsapienter institutos ciues haud reperias ubilibet" (52131-5411). Thissentence, with its double negations of thought, carefully though asym-metrically balanced and suspended, is perhaps the best single bit ofevidence of the sophisticated and extraordinarily complex effect Morecan accomplish with litotes. Understatement, emphasis, irony, a rapidmovement of the mind ti om one extreme to the other, a kind of doublevision : all are present in this cunning juxtaposition of all sorts of horridmonsters, in fact both fallacious and irnagina q, yet so "real" they eve nhave names, and the idealized abstraction of "well and wisely trainedcitizens" (53/ 39), who are imaginary for quite other reasons (which theUtopia will reveal). More turns different levels of reality upside downas he contrasts the former, which (translating the negatives literally)you almost never don't find, with the l atter, whom by no means can youfind wheresoever you please. Crucial here are the con trary perspectives an dinverse directions built into the denials ; he fust moves towards alwaysfrom never, the second towards never, not quite from always, but fromthe place you'dli ke to think there would be some. But since the fvst d o no treally exist, where will we find the second ? In Utopia, Noplace, in terms ofthe story. It does indeed seem that this sentence is the natural climax to thesection originally written as the introduction to Book 11, followingHexter's outline of the sequence in which More worked on the a c t dUtopia (xv-xxiii).

As More uses litotes again and again, ,continuously affirmingsomething by denying its opposite, the figure becomes, ultimately, a para-d q p of the structure and method of the book as a whole, echoing, oftenin the briefest of syntactical units, the larger, paradoxical and double1. Sister Miriam Joseph, Rhetoric in Shakespeare5 Time : Literary %ory ofRenaisunce Europe (1947 ; rpt. New York : Harcourt, 1962), p. 323. Becauselitotes does involve logic, 1 found this study, which stresses the relationships theRenaissance saw between rhetoric and logic, particularly helpful.

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11 0 ELIZABETH MdUTCHEO Nvision which will discover the best s tate of t he commonwealth in an islandcalled Noplace. The more immediate purpose and effects of litotes canrarely be apprehended in a single term, however. Few of More's are assimple as the "haud dubie" already cited, which, although admittedlysomewhat formulaic, is not quite as simple as it seems, either. Inevitablyone 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 ofnegation d o w for a multiple effect which it becomes exceedingly difficultto generalize about, even though we can start where the sixteenthcentury did.The Renaissance, in particular, often thought of litotes as a kind ofmodesty f w e , a way to avoid boasting and to ingratiate oneself by wayof understatement. Hence Sidney's famous comment near the beginningof his Apobgie for Poetrie : "... I wil,giue you a neerer example of myselfe, who (I knowe not by what mischance) in these my not old yeresand idelest times, hauing slipt into the title of a Poet. ." . I Erasmus uses itno less wittily ;Folly's fu st words in her encomium include an elegant andespecially paradoxical variation of a common litotes, as she, Foolishness,explains that she is not ignorant of t he world's opinion of her : Utcumquede me vulgo mortales loquuntur, neque enim sum nescia ..".2 These are,in fact, simply the most explicit form of what Henry Peacham and otherrhetoricians saw as its most common usage : "This form of speech tendethmost usually to praise or dispraise, and that in a modest forme andmanner,"3 a definition which clearly reflects the Renaissance tendencyto think of all literature in terms of a rhetorical formula0. . Hardisonc a b "the theory of praise".4Praise is an oddly general word to twentieth century ears ;we willneed more precise terms. But many of the litotes in the Utopia can, ofcourse, be read this way, just as the Utopia itself can be read both apraise "& optimo reipvblicae statv" and a dispraise or satire of men andsocieties as they exist. A clear, and one of t he few examples of a modestyfigure 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.GregorySmith(1904 ; pt. London : Oxford Univ. Press, 1964), 1, 150.2. Lksiderii Emsmi Opem Omnia. IV (1703 ; rpt. Hildesheim : Georg OlmsVerlegsbuchhandlung, 1962), 405. This example reveals more about Eroamus'understandingof litotes than hia tene comments in hiaDe copia, wherehe treat8 it asa kind of diminution ; ee Opem Omnu. I, 22 [Lib. I, Cap. XXIX]. But see alro hiscomment8 on negation, 39-40 [Lib. I, Cap. LI].3. Henry P e ac h , The M e n of Eloqvence (London, 1593), p. 151 ;seeSisterMiriam Joseph,Rhetoric n Shakespeare'srime, p. 323.4. O.B. Hardison, Jr., TheEnduring Monument : Snrdy of the Idea of Raise inRenaiswce Lit- Theory and k t i c e (Chapel Hill : Univ. of North CarolinaPress,1962), p. 26.

LITOTES : DENYING THE CONTRARY 111Its presence here seems, primarily, to enlarge our dramatic sense of this6ctional More and his courtesy, yet it also, usefully, ca b attention t ohisinference about Fbphael's occupatio n as "nauclerum" (48/2 9), aninference which is immediately qualified by Giles, who thereby transformsa realistic detail into something more symbolic : Raphael has sailed insearch of truth . There are many instances of praise, though some are morestraqh tforwar d than others. Among the simpler are sailors who are "nonimperiti" [not unskilled] in sea and weather (52118) ;Cardinal Morto n,in company "non difficilis" [no t hard to please] (58123-24) ; fool whooccasionally said things which were "non absurda" [not absurd] (80/2 7) ;Plato, who "bene haud dubie" [wit hout do ubt well] foresaw the behaviorof kings (86116) ; an academic philosophy which is "non insuauis "["not without its charm" (9916-7)] among friends (9816). So, too, manyelements of Utopian society are singled out for praise by subtle variationsof litotic und erstatement which emphasize t he less tangible. Their f w d ,for instance, includes a supply of licorice "haud exiguam" [no t a t allmeagre] (11615) ; their buildings are "neutiquam sordida" [in no waymean1 (12014) ; their clothes are "nec ad oculum indecora" [n ot un-becoming to the eye] (12615). But their language is "neque uerborumhops, nec insuauis auditu. nec ulla fidelior anirni intervres est" [notlachn g words, not without.charm to the ear, nor is there ;more faith fulexpounder of thought] (158113-14), while their music, by its harmony offeeling, sound, and sense, which "wonderfully affects, penetrates, andinflames the souls of the hearers" (23718-9) d o w s the Utopians "hauddubie" to far surpass us in this respect (23613).

A conspicuous and humorous example of dispraise, using the wordin it s simplest sense, is ascribed to Cardinal Morton as he interrupts theverbose lawyer in Book I, neatly inverting the lawyer's tediousdaim tomake all clear "paucis" ["in a few words" (71/ 25)]. "Tace inquitCardinalis : nam haud responsurus paucis uideris qu i sic incipias" (70122-24) ;" 'Hold your peace', interrupted the Cardinal, 'for you hardly seemabout to reply in a few words if you begin thus' " (71130-32). Moredevastating in- it s patent understatement E Fbphaells f d ttack on thecommonwealth, which heaps gifts on so-cded gentlemen and bankers,and oth er lazy men, but provides "nihil benigne" (240110) [not a t dgenerously] for "farmers, colliers, common laborers, carters, and carpenterswithout whom there would be no commonwealth at all" (241112-14). Yeta third example of litotic dispraise, the subtly understated "haud pauca"(244114) of the fictional More's final st atement belongs here, though it issubsumed in still more complex effects, for now the grounds of dispraise.expressed with conventions litotic irony, become ;he unconventionalgrounds of praise.lWhat results is as powerful and sophisticated in itsway as the much briefer sentence on the Scyllas, the Celaenos, and other1. 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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112 ELIZABETH McCUTCHEONterrifying monsters in Book I. At fust, persona More seems to temperhis objections to the customs and laws of the Utopians, and speaks as thewell-intentioned, and certainly the well-mannered gentleman he is, whoGnds "haud pauca" [not a few things] which bother him about the Utopiansociety. But his list of objections is really a reductio ad absurdum.As he singles ou t for special reproach "their commo n life and subsistence",(245122-23) because it eliminates the "exchange of money" (245123) andwith it the nobility, splendor, and so on which are "in th e estimation ofthe commo n people, the t rue glories and ornaments of th e common-wealth" (245125-26). his whole argum ent is undercut. So the internalconvention 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 drama-tizes effects which led P uttenha m to call this figure "the M oderator".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 figureLiptote, which therefore I call the Moderator, and becomes vs many timesbetter t o speake in that sort qu allified, than if we spake it by mor e forcibletermes, and neuertheles is equipo lent in sence...".What Put tenham, anda host of other Renaissance rhetoricians are sensitive to, in part, is theemphasis which litotes somewhat paradoxically achieves by seeming tounderstate, moderate, or diminish its case by negating its contrary.Indeed , as Hoskins points ou t, "these figures are but cou nterfeits ofamplification" ; n Thomas Blount's words, litotes (called diminution inthis connection ) "descends by the same steps that Amplification ascends,and differs no more then up Hill and dow nD ale ..".2 If we press Blount'sanalogy a bit, we can see one reason for litotes' appeal to writers likeMore or Sidney, for whom ar s ce he artem was a literary ideal. It allowsfor th e apparently relaxed and easy descent, rather than th e laboriousclimb. Understated instead o f hyperbolic, it often seems to turn attenti onaway &om itself, like its cousin, paralipsis, which emphasizes somethingby pretending to ignore it,3 and it can disarm potential opponents andavoid controversy ; et it em phasizes whatever it touches.Emphasis through litotes is to o ubiquitous in the Utopia t o needmany more examples. We may no t be altogether conscious of it each timethat it underscores a concrete detail, but it becomes extremely noticeable,because of its order in the sentence, its construction, or its frequency - ord hree - as More builds towards crucial points. Thus the actu al narrativevirtually starts with a litotes. Most translations obscure this ; he Yaletranslation talks of "certain weighty matters" (47110) which it placestowards the latter part of a clause turned into a sentence. By contrast,1. Gtorge Puttenham, 77te Arte of English Poesie (1 589 ; pt. Menston, Eng. :The Scolar Ress, 196 8), p. 153.2. Hoskins, Directions for Speech and Style, p. 36 ; Blount. me Academieof Ebquence, p. 3 1.3. Father Su m discuses paralipsis (preterition) in the Utopia, briefly ; ee his"Aspects of More's Latin Style in Utopio", p. 104.

LITOTES : DENYING THE CONTRARY 1 1 3More's own words, almost at the very beginning of what is an exception allylong sentence, "Qwm non exigvi mom enti negocia quaedam" (4 6/8 ),are a key to the tone of much of thesubsequent work by their diminut ionand an understatement which is played against regal superlatives : "inuic-tissimus" (4618-9 ), "ornatissimus", a nd "serenissimo" (46110). So to oMore ends his introductory sentence to the occupat ions of the Utopianswith an emphat ic l i totes which brings home, without seeming to d o so,the place of agriculture in Utopia ; griculture is the one art "cuius ne moest expers" (124121-22 ), [which no o ne does not share in]. And More'slast remarks include not only the dramatic "haud pauca" (244 114)but the emphatic and ironic "non satis" (244125). in reference to tho se. ,.men who are afraid they may not be thought wise enough unlessthey criticize the discoveries of o thers.Bv clusterinn litotes like these. More can achieve some verv brillianteffects indeed. .There are, for exam ple, thirteen litotes in just overthe fus t four pages of the Utopia - all leading up to and preparingus for our fus t introduct ion to the cus toms and ins ti tutions of theUtopians. The practices of Utopia and other newly discovered countriesare cunningly underscored by this sort of repeated understatement,subsequently embellished by marginal references, apparently added byPeter Giles and Erasmus.l Raphael's accoun t of the Polylerites is a case

in po int. He tells us, in the space of a few lines, that this people, whosepenal system distinguishes between the value of life and money, beingtherefore ev erything England's is not, is "neque exiguum, neque irnpru;denter ins t i tutum" (74121-22) ; that they are " n d a in re maligne"con tent with th e fruits of their land (74125) ; hat not often do theyvisit other countries, or are they visited ["neque adeunt alios saepe,neque adeuntur". (7 4/26 )] ; nor do they care to push their front iers["neque fmes prorogare s tudent" (74/2 7)] ; hat they live "haud perindesplendide, atque commode" (74129-30) ; hat even by name they are not"satis no ti" (7611) [enough known] except to their closest neighbors.As these litotes follow several others on the same page, the reader isbarraged by all sorts of negatives negated and confronted with a massivedecoding process. So much that is in fact desirable is described in termsof the undesirable it is not - the Polylerites are not a small country ;they are not unwisely governed ; hey are not eager for more land, orfame, or fortune ; hey live by no means as splendidly as comfortably -that here, and everywhere, we have to reckon with irony as well asemphasis bv dim inution.

Irony of som e sort is, of course, inseparable %om t he unde rstatemen tand process of denied denial in litotes. As Hoskins explains, "... the formerfashion of diminution sometimes in ironious sort goes for amplifiation ;as, speaking of a great person, no mean man, etc.'! He adds tha t "this is1. Edward Surtz, "Editions of Utopia", and n. 22/21,28@281.

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114 ELIZABETH MCCUTCHEONan 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 inten d to be taken as saying a mere modicum of whatwe 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 th at is large andwell-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 s o very few" (225126-27)] who give up all learningand leisure to perform good works for othe rs at the cost of pleasure in thislife, we would notice the a pparent ly simple irony of diminution and denial.More than a very few (few ? some ? many ? a great many ? ) do this.More, however, obtains far more powerful and ironic effects, thoughperhaps nowhere so dramatically as in the concluding "haud pauca"passage, because of the radical contrast between two value systems, oneconcerned with well-being, the other with power, which stands behindso many of these litotes.' When, then, Raphael compares the justice(so-called) of ot her n ations with that of th e Utopians, and asks how it canpossibly be just that the nobleman, the banke r, or anyone whose work"non sit Reipublicae rnagnopere necessarium" (238124-25) [is "not veryessential to t he commonwealth" (239132 )) lives in mapi fice nce, whilethe common man lives less well than the beasts of burden, the ironicunderstatement is painfully intensive. Again we hear a living voice.

Irony is itself sometimes subsumed in a more complex effect whichis satiric in force, a result of the alternatives which litotes as a figurerequires. The denied negations do, in fact, frequently comment indirectly,but never theless pointedly, on aspects of life elsewhere. We have, onthe most microcospic scale, examples of what A.R. Heiserman, citingErasmus' definition of satire generally, calls the vio divers^.^ While, then ,the speaker seems to be looking at some new world when he says, forinst&ce, that the Polylerites ar e not unwisely governed, the wordshe denies come closer to home. Again, the virtuous and loving behaviorof those "haud sane pauci" (224120-21) in Utopia who pursue hard workfor the well-being of others obliquely points to the very few in the knownworld who would dream of doing such a thing. Thus that general andironic "awareness o f contradiction between the two worlds" whichFather Surtz speaks of in his introduction to the U t op i a (clii) is mademuch more precise by way of litotic c ontrasts like these.1. Hoskins,Directions for Speech and Style, p. 36 ; ee also Peacham, 7h e CordenofEloqvence, pp. [email protected]. Rosemond Tuve, Elizabethan and Metaphysical Imagery : e m i m e Pockand kntieth-Century &tics (1947 ; rpt. Phoenix ed., Chicago, llinois : Univ. ofChiwo Press, 1961), p. 205. See too Heinrich Lausberg, Handbuch der litemkchenRhetorik. 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 YaleUtopia.4. A.R. Heiserman, "Satire in the Utopio", PMLA. 78 (1963). 164.

LITOTES : DENYING THE CONTRARY 115Sometimes 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 thatRaphael found towns and cities and "very populous commonwealths"(5311) "non pessime institutas" (5211) [with not bad institutions].At the botto m of the same page we learn that persona More and his friendsdid not ask for information about monsters, "quibus nihil est minusnouum" (52131) [than which there is nothing less new], a palpable hit atthe taste for tall traveller's tales which, simultaneously, calls atte ntio nto the newness of Utopia. The Polylerites feed their prisoners "haudduriter" (76113) [by no means harshly], while the Utopians elect thetranibors annually but change them "haud temere" (122121) ["not ...without good reason" (123122-23)] and "never claim payment of mostof the money" (149129) they rcceive for the goods they uade , becausethey think it "haud aequum" (148126) [not a t all fair] to take awaysomething they don't need when others do. Again, the Utopians goto war "non temere" (29014-5) ["not lightly" (20114-5)] ; heir priestswear vestments of a material "non perinde preciosa" (234117-18) [notequally costly], for though the design and pattern are wonderful, no goldor precious stones are used. In each instance, of course, the litotes asa whole is an especially effective form of praise, the understatementmaking it less incredible. At the same time, the alternative to be deniedis an oblique at tack o n the real world, its cruelty t o prisoners, its politicalcorruption, its gee d and usury, its love of war, the corruption of its church.

At times More develops the satiric implications of litotes like theseby making more explicit the contrasts between the Utopian world andChristendom. A superb instance of this occurs when Raphael's discourseturns to the Utopian attitude towards gold and silver. Those metals "quaecaeterae gentes non minus fere dolenter ac uiscera sua distrahi patiuntur,-apud Vtopienses, si semel omnia res postularet efferri, nemo sibi iacturamunius fecisse assis uider etur" (1 211 5-18). Here Raphael, through More,actually talks of other nations, and underscores their greed by a powerfuland painful litotic analogy ("non minus fere dolenter") between the lossof their entrails and the loss of their gold. In absolute contrast is thestate 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" ( 1531 20).

Subsequent litotes in thissame passage are exploited, delightfully. fortheir possibilities as figures of satiric diminution. When Utopian childrensee no one but children ["non nisi pueros" ( 152/23)]using gems, hey putthem aside. And still another litotic contrast glances at our practices :"non aliter ac nostri pueri, quum grandescunt nuces, bullas, & pupasabijciunt" (152125-26). The "non aliter ac", [no t otherwise than ],which allows More to be explicit without being too obvious, also forcesus t o weigh, in our o wn minds, gold and our attitu de towards it againstthe worthless trifles, the lockets and the dolls of our childhood. With

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11 6 ELIZABETH McCUTCHEONgreater subtlety, it satirically diminishes old to a mere nothing, a "bulla"or even a bubble, if More is half-punningaere. I t is this analogy, of course,which leads directly t o the splendidly absurd procession of t he Anemolianambassadors, loaded down with gold and gems, expecting applause, butmistaken for slaves (which they are, of a sort), a sight Raphael tells us,in yet another litotes, he fo und "non minus erat uoluptatis consyderare"(154118) ["no less delightful to notice" (155120)) than their misplacedpride in their fine clothing. Further litotes crowd the page as the tempo-rary comedy of the procession is followed by a more vehement attackon the way of the world. There are the ambassadors, who were t o discoverthat 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 ofgold. There are the Utopians, who wonder why anyone can possibly thinkhe is more noble because the textur e of his woolen clothing is finer,since... "ouis olim gestauit, nec aliud tamen interim, qu m ouis hit "(156117-18) ["a sheep once wore the wool and yet all the time hewas not ot her tha n a sheep" (157118-19)]. This litotes is both funny

and satirically diminishing ; n more serious vein is a litotic referenceto the bloc khead, "nec minus etiam improbus quam stultus" (156122-23)[no less dishonest than foolish], who enslaves many wise and good menbut will be enslaved in turn, when he loses his "great heap of gold coins"(157127) because of cha nce or a legal trick that no less than chance ["nihilminus ac fortuna" (156/26 )] can "confound high and low" (157129-30).Or,most shocking i totes ofall, because the apparent diminuti on intensifiesthe horror of a value system which virtually makes gold its god, there isthe madness (as the Utopians see it) of t hose who pay all but divine honors["tantum non diuinos" (156 /34) ] to those wh o are rich. In passages likethis one, then, litotes becomes an extremely powerful weapon withwhich More can attack the misguided values of the known world whilepraising Utopian customs.Still other effects are inherent in litotes, as More uses them.Ambiguity is one, for reasons both logical and psychological. TheRenaissance was well aware of the logical complications and ambiguitieswhich result when something is affumed by negating the contrary.Litotes and ten other figures (an important group in the Utopia, includingantithesis, irony, paradox and paralipsis) can be specifically relatedto that topic of invention called opposites, of which there were thoughtto be four sorts in all :contraries, relatives, privatives, and contradictories.To affirm one c ontradictory is to deny the other, but litotes based on thefirst three categories may well be ambiguous. Though immedi ate contraries(faithlunbelief, for example) have no species between, so that "one orthe oth er must be affirmedw,l mediat e contraries do have a mediate or1. Sister Miriam Joseph, Rhetoric in Shakespeare's Time, p. 322.

I LITOTES:DENYINGTHECONTRARY 117middle ground between the cwo extremes. "Not white" is the seeminglyinevitable text-book example ; s Thomas Wilson says, "if a do th be notwhite, it is no reason to call it blacke. For i t may bee blewe, greene, redd,russett...".Relatives (Isidore cites "few" a nd "many") andprivatives(sight and blindness, for example, for which a mediate could be an eyeinflammation, according to 1sidore)Z can also be ambiguous. On thesegrounds 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). "baudsaepe" (1 88/25), "non saepe" ( 184/29), or "haud semel" (21216) ar e lo@-cally ambiguous. We may, at firs t, think of their opposi tes, just as we dowith whiteb lack, yet all have one or more species between. "Nonpessime", for instance, has t o move from worst through rather bad an d badeven before it can move towards good, quite good, or the best, if it does ;- -"haud pauci" may mean more than a few, some, or many, and "haudsemel" [no t once] is even more open ended.A second kind of ambiguity arises from the psycho logic^ peculia-rity of negating a negation.3 As Jespersen has observed, "... it shouldbe noted that the double negative always modifies the idea, for the resultof the whole expression is somewhat different from the simple ideaexpressed positively." He calls attention to the same phenomeno nwhich led Puttenham to call litotes the "Moderator", though he int er-prets it differently, when he adds that "not uncommon is weaker thancommon,... the psychologic al reason being that the &tour throughthe two mutually destroying negatives weakens the mental energy ofthe hearer and implies on the part of the speaker a certain hesitationabsent from the blunt, outspoken common ..".4 In fact, since litotesas a rhetorical and literary technique not only moderates but intensifies,so that, as John Smith points out, " ..sometimes a word is put downwith a sign of negation, when as much is signified as if we had spokenaffimtively, if not more,"S it may be either stronger or weaker.But it is ambiguous. We can and must depend upo n the conte xt, of course.1. Thomas Wilson, ?he Rule of Reason ; onteining the Art of Lo& [1551](London, 1567), fol. 52", as cited in Sister Mirism Joseph,Rhetoric in Shukes-kTfme,p. 322.2. Isidorua, Etymologiafum, in PIlhologize cum s 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 ofambiguity, but he does not discuss double negations, although he does commentusefully on negatives in general ; ee 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, in Selected HtiWof Otto Jespersen (1917 ; pt. London : George Allen & Unwin Ltd., n.d-hp.63.Cf. Ch. 24 in his The Philosophy of Gmmmur (1924 ; pt. Allen & Unwin. 1948).5. John Smith, The Mystery of Rhetorick Unveil'd (London, 1688), sig. ~ 4 .

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118 ELIZABETH McCUTCHEONbut even so we d o have to hesitate and decide to what extent a particularlitotes is moderating, to what extent emphasizing, or better, attemp t tohold two apparently contradictory but equally real effects in our mindsat the same time. 1 do not think, pace Jespersen, t hat this necessarily"weakens the me ntal energy of the hearer". More probably it arouses it!requiring us to linger over the construction and its context - hence itsparticular effect iveness a s a figure of emphasis. But we are requiredto undergo a complex mental action ; if something is, for example,not uncommon, to pursue Jespersen's example, we move from a commonwhich isn't qui te stated to t he uncommon which is, and then, becausethat is denied, back towards common again. But we do not usually knowquite where to stop, a process we can visualize this way :

[ com~o~] UNCOMMONBUT

"NOT UNCOMMON"

It is just this sort o f ambiguous area which a recent cartoon exploits.2A husband and wife are standing in front of what should be a welcomemat. But this mat reads, "not unwelcome", to the chagrin of the wife.who says, " 'See what I mean ? You're never sure just where you standwith them' ".

In a larger sense we're never quit e sure where we stan d in the Utopia,either. It is, of course, a commonplace to talk about ambiguity in theUtopia. But on the smallest syntactical level ambiguity does exist of a sortwhich can never be altogether resolved, and probably was not meant to be.For this ambiguity vivifies the text, arouses its readers, and agitatesits points, however casually they appear to be made, so that they neitherevaporate nor solidify. We are constantly, though obliquely, teased bythe many lit otes aheady cit ed, 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, perhapsconsciously, this last "haud pauca" contradi cts the implications ofanother "haud pauca" early in Book 1 (54/ 2), which More uses in apparentand ironic antithesis to t he 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 rehearsednot a few points f rom which our own cities, nations, races, and kingdomsmay take example for the correction of their errors" (5512-4).

We can sense inherent ambiguities and the potential spread ofmeaning in a given litotes from still another point of view by looking atvarious translations of the "non exigvi momenti negocia" (4618) of More's1. See alsoLk M. ollander, "Litotes in Old Norse", p. 12. Thede w Yorker, February 6, 1971, p. 36.

LITOTES: DENYING THE CONTRARY 119fust sentence. Ralph Robinson, thinking of litotes as an emphatic andintensifying 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 o f no small Consequence".Closer to our period, H.V.S. Ogden, who chietly hears the moderatingpossibilities, turns the phrase into "some differences". In an attempt toreconcile the moderating impulse and the emphatic one, Paul Turnerwrites of "a rath er serious differen ce of opinion".' The Yale transla tionsettles for simple emphasis : "certain weighty matter s" (47110). Burnetalone has left some of the ambiguities unresolved ;all the other translatorshave, in a sense, made our minds up for us. But what we gain in claritywe lose elsewhere. The alternatives, and therefore any possible irony,disappear, as does the ambiguity, and with that, the tension and movementof mind, so that nuances of meaning are also dissolved. In short, thislitotes becomes far less significant, both in what it says and the wayit says it, as an anticipation of the Utopia to come. For the phrase Morewrites certainly calls attention, however obliquely, to the kind of issuebeing 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 , ~uthe certainly says enough to reinforce our sense of the power and splendorand pride which activates almost all states (exc ept, as we shall discover,Utopia). Indeed, "negocia" itself has commercial overtones which arevery unlike the word Raphael WN later use for what he thinks of as thepublic welfare : "salutem publicam" (10418). By beginning, then, with"non exigvi momenti negocia" More is able to raise, for just a momen t,a question to which much of the subsequent discussion returns : whatsortsofstate matters are trifling ? And what sorts are not ? But, whateverelse it does, this fu st "non" foreshadows the processes of negation andopposites which typify s o much of the Utopia.

Like all other negatives, only more so, because now the negativeis itself negated, litotes speak of a habit of mind, a tendency to seemore than one side to a question.3 ~nt elle ctual ,udicial, and persuasive,-1. Ralph Robynson, trans. (1 551) 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 b y Sir Thomas More, &ncellor ofEngland : insla ted into E d b h(London, 1684),p. 1 ;H.V.S. Ogden, ed. and trans., Utopia,by Sir Thomas More (NewYork : AppletonCenturyCrofts, 1949), p. 1 ; aul Turner, rans., Utopia,by ThomasMore (Hannondsworth, Middlesex, Eng. :Penguin Books Ltd., 1965). p. 37.2. In this connection see the note to 4618,295 in the Yale Utopia.3. Mores use of negatives in general, though beyond the scope of this study, is animportant element in his style (and his thought) and needs more investigation. Inthinking about negatives, I found some terse comments by Ian Watt on the negativein Henry James illuminating ; e talks of what he calls "the right judicial frame ofmind". See Ian Watt, 'The First Paragraph of m e Ambusndors :An Explication",Essays in Ctiticism, X (July, 1960), 250-74 ; pt. in RhetoricaI A~ ly se s f LiteracyWorks, 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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1 2 0 ELIZABETH MCUTCHEONthey ask us to weigh and consider alternatives which the writer hashimself considered. So each litotes does, then, link writer with reader,who tries to repeat, as best he can, the m ental and judicial processesthe figure so economically and o ften ambigu ously encloses. As Puttenh amsays, litotes is a "sensable figure" , on e which "alter [s] and affect [s ]the minde by alteration of sensel'.l The persuasive bias of Renaissancerhetoric is implicit here. Where a modern writer in the ironic mode, likeHerman Melville or Hemy James, will use this sort of negation to revealhesitations, qualifications, uncertainties and ambiguous complications inthe consciousness of the narrator or a major character in his fiction,More's fiction, thoug h no less ironic, uses litotes, primarily, to affect andalter our minds. Yet it is also true th at th e alternatives were More's tobegin with, so that litotes makes us simultaneously much more aware ofhis mind in action and certain divisions in it ; t reinforces our sense ofMore himself as one w ho, indeed , saw mo re than one side of a question.2From this point of view, even such a seemingly conventional litotesas "haud dubie" (62125, 86/1 6, 96/32, 23613) or a more emphatic"Neque dubium est" (216127 -28) or a "non d ubito"(2 4211 6) impliesa process of mental assessment on the part of the speaker. It suggests,as "to b e sure" or "certainly" canno t, that someone has weighed thepossibilities and reached a decision -- hence its usefulness as a persuasivefigure. The same effect is multiplied in one of More's favorite litoticconstructions, which, unlike mos;, does spell out ( bu t qualify) its alter-natives : some combination of a neeative with minus or minus auam.

'2Like the "nec minus salutqis quam festiuus" of the title page,or the several non minus... quam litotes in the passage describing theUtopian way with gold, these constructions seem to ask us to weighor try to balance different ideas or values, almost as if we were askedto find th e balance poin t o n a moving see-saw. The ideas are grammatically"equal",3 yet, ofte n, the figure is weighted on one side ; here is, in otherwords, a kind of dynamic emphasis which requires that we hold the twoelements both together and apart. It can startle, or it can result in ironicor satiric incongruities : hings which shouldn't be "equal" are, but thingswhich should be, too often aren't. Raphael's description of the robber,who is in no less danger "if merely conde mned for theft" than "if he wereconvicted of mu rder as well" (7518-9) is an instance of the first sort ;his description of the Utopian way of providing for its citizens, an instanceof the second : "Then take into account the fact that there is no lessprovision for those who are now helpless but once worked than for thosewho are still working" (239122-25 ). But most litotes in Utopia do no t ,in fact, spell out the alternatives in this way. With litotes like "non1 . Puttenham, T k rte of English Poesie, p. 148.2. An intensive example of a reading on these lines is David Bevington, 'TheDialogue 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 Biographyof an Idea (1952 ; rpt . Torchbo ok ed., New York : Harper. 1965).3. Jespersen, Negation in English and 01her languages, discusses non minusquam briefly. pp. 83-84.

LITOTES :DENYING THE CONTRARYpessime" or "haud pauca" it is almost as if we saw one side of a metap hy-sical see-saw. So the mind is stimulated or teased into the sort of actiondescribed earlier, having, often, t o construct the oppo site which isdenied 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, howevernegatively they may appear to be described. As More says, in a f me pieceof understatement, which also reveals an awareness of just how compIexthis sort of q uestion is, Raphael foun d nations "non pessime institutas"(5211). But with this we come back, full circle, to Peacham's point ;litotesdoes, indeed, "praise or dispraise, and that in a modeste forme a nd man-nerN. lIn the Utopia, more ~ rec isel y, t praises and dispraises, often almosts imultaneously, s ince to deny something abo ut Utopia is to affi rm i t ,indirectly, of the world as we know it.More ended his book with a famous wish. My own present hope isa more modest one -- that someh ow litotes be more systematicallyretained in translations of utopia, which have, usually, made a t besttepid at tempts to preserve it , often convert ing a l i tot ic cons truct ion to asimple positive. Obviously, syntactical pattern s are difficult to tur n fr om onelanguage to anoth er, and negatives are trickier still. But when, for examp le,More's final "haud pauca" (24411 4) becomes "many" (245 /17) , or thefrequent litotic descriptions of the Polylerites and the Utopians, whichcomment via diversa on the way of this world, are t ransformed intostraightforward descriptions, we lose the emphasis and t he und erstateme nt,the i rony and poss ible sat i re, and the ambigui ty of the or i p d . The com-plicated action of M ore's mind is coarsened, his meaning b lurred, the energyand tension of a muscular prose relaxed. On a larger scale, we lose thecumulative effect of a device much repeated, and we have, to o often ,only one side of what is at least a two-sided vision inherent in everydenial of the contrary. In More's hands, litotes was, in fact, a superlativetool for both the exceedingly polite gentleman, the fictional More,and the passionate visionary who had seen Utopia. Avoiding controv ersy,i t cons tant ly cal ls a t tent ion, without seeming to do so, to the purposeand values behind the countless delightful details with which Morecreated both dialogue and discourse ; t truly is a figure of and forthe mind. Intensive yet understated, emp hatic, often drily ironic,sometimes humorous or wry, concealing tremendo us energy in its appa rentease and frequent brevity, litotes is not the least of the rhetorical figuresin the vision and satire we call Utopia. *

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

University of Hawaii Elizabeth McCUTCHEON

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FROM A NONJESUIT CONFREREAN D COUEAGUEa

From Rome, via San Silvestro 23, on September 30, the feast of"holy Saint Jerome", the Rw. John hlaguire, C.S.C., whose lateatarticle(to appear soon in Renaissance Quarterly) has precisely to do withEkasmus' Hieronymi Stridonensis Vita, sent us a letter from which weexcerpta few paragraphs :

Dear Father Marc'hadour,... Thank you wry much for the circular and the pink rem inder. Theenclosed check will cover this year's copies of Moreana, to be sent to mein Ro me, as well as a year's subscription on behalf of the Loyola RomeCenter L ibrary.I look forward to the Utp& special. I bet Father Surtz wiU beterribly embarrassed by the honour done him. A Jesuit colleague of m anyyears wrote to me recently : Fr. Surtz dislikes any personal expressionof praise or appr eciation of h is high qualities, especially if they were toappear in public, so that it is always better to understate his case thanoverstate it."Father Surtz's personal and intellectual influence unquestionablyextends far beyond what any listing of his works or of the theses hedirected can show. Former students tell of the immense care with whichhe correcte d their papers. Colleagues wa*ly recou nt his willingness toassist them in their own research and witing. Administrators speak ofthe help he generously gave them . ("I f you asked his advice orpresenteda problem to him , you would always receive, within twenty-fou r hours,a well thought-out and researched answer in writing. ")I would have loved to contribute to this ~ es sc hr if t yself, but myown research thi s p t ear has been on Erasmus. However, I haw justfinished teaching U top iq in my Renaissance literature class and was onceagain reminded of the immense debt I and so many other teachers oweFather Sur tz. Thoug h I have respected his scholarship fiom afar for man yyears, my personal acquaintance with him is of recent origin and ourmeetings have been few. k t ear, m y first at Loyolo University, he wason sabbatical leave, so I had few opportunities to see him, a few glimpsesat a distan ce as he was hurrying across camp us, ust a brief chat befo re animportant departmental meeting. And this year he is in Chicago while Ifind my self at Loyola's Rom e Center - a progrom sponsored by L oyolaUniversity of Chicago or several hundred studen tsfio m its own campusesan dfi om more thun seventy-five other American universities. The studentsspend their junior year in this ancient home o f Western and ChristianCivilization. But everyone to whom I have spoken here in Rome, whereFather Surtz ta ught a ew years ago, as well as in C hicago, has both im menserespect and genuine affection for him. Hi s energy, industry and p e r ~ ~ ~ lkindness are invariably mentioned. ("His o wn life exemplifies the kind ofChristian humanism found in St. T homas More")...

With best personal wishes,