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Situational Irony
Style
Explanation and Analysis:
Utopia is a curious mixture of different styles and writing techniques. There are several letters included at the beginning of the novel, exchanged between More, Peter Giles, and others. These letters are real—insofar as they were actually written and sent by those individuals, and are included as additional documents. Utopia is thus partially an epistolary novel, though not in the traditional sense: the letters, newspaper clippings, and diary entries included in most epistolary novels are fictional fragments penned by fictional characters. In the spirit of blending reality and fiction, though, More includes both real letters and real people as "characters" in Utopia, making it somewhat difficult to parse which elements of the book he would consider to be purely fiction.
Beginning in Book One, the style of Utopia shifts to one of dramatic dialogue, therefore giving it a rather theatrical quality as the characters converse with each other. The plot of Utopia is more rhetorical in nature than it is event- or action-centric. Any tension, climax, or suspense lies purely in the characters' turns of phrase, in their use of logos, ethos, or pathos in argumentation. This, in turn, creates a sense of catharsis, as a certain satisfaction arises from a character having made a salient point or having provided a meaningful solution to some social ill.
