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Long the reverenced object of hagiographers, from the humanist saint of William Roper to the socialist martyr of Karl Kautsky, Thomas More is undergoing a second martyrdom at the hands of modern biographers. They have argued for a lack of integration between More's life and its literary productions. The image of the utopian idealist and dreamer is refuted, for instance, by claims that the fury of the polemical works reveals More's "true personality."1 A good deal of these biographers' efforts at de-canonization centers around the critical period during which More wrote Utopia.2 They point to irremediable contradictions between Thomas More, the humanist idealist, and what Stephen Greenblatt labels "Morus," the public servant on an embassy for Henry VIII. In his The Public Career of Thomas More, J. A. Guy portrays More as a sycophantic courtier. Guy argues that More dissembled his intentions to enter court employment even from his dear friend Erasmus. For Guy, More's entry into court service was the culmination of savvy political stagecrafting, "the climax of a progression by which he gained the attention of Henry and Wolsey."3 Focusing on More's activities in the Netherlands during the time of the writing of Utopia, Richard Marius points out that the embassy upon which More had embarked was intended |