Frances Bacon's "The New Atlantis": pre-class thoughts

In The New Atlantis, Bacon creates a perfect world.  We see through the perspective of refugees who wash ashore, rebirthed like so many heroic figures in epic stories.  They land in an idealised Christian setting - a world of plenty and tolerance.  Everything, including the food, is familiar, but different - better.

This new world is rooted in numbers.  They can stay 6 weeks, it has been 37 years since the last visitor etc. The naming of the people and places allude to Christian symbols.. Saloman brings to mind Soloman, a biblical figure of "wisdom, wealth and power" whose fatal flaw of turning away from God brings ruin on his blessed kingdom. Bensalem brings to mind the kingdom of Salem as mentioned in the bible, and of course, in modern times, Bensalem brings to mind Salem Massachusetts, now famous due to the witch trials which happen at the end of the seventeenth century (70 years after this work is published).

I've taken classes on dystopian fiction, but not utopian fiction.  I thought they would be different sides of the same coin; both commentating on the dangers of modern society and hubris, but I wonder if I am projecting too much on this text.  Am I?

Atlantis.  What do we know about Atlantis?  It was a mythical, advanced island or coastal nation which was overcome by flooding and lost to the world.  The concept of Atlantis is both an inspiration and wonder at the heights that man can reach, and also, like the tower of Babel, a warning against hubris and a reminder that even at the heights of our achievement, the power of man is nothing compared to the power of God.

My modern reader's perspective expects to be presented by the ruin of the kingdom, for some form of exile of our characters; however, instead we are presented with a systematic accounting of Bacon's ideals of a perfect society:  dissecting Bensalem's social structure, religion, education, science, arts, entertainment, marriage, and international policy, to name a few .

The closing words to the text are significant "The rest was not perfected".  Not "To be continued", or an abrupt ending as you would find in Sidney's Arcadia, but "the rest was not perfected".  Does Bacon mean that his story was unfinished and unworthy of publishing, or the world of Bensalem was not perfected?  I suspect he meant both.

Works Cited:

Bacon, Frances, and Campanella, Tomasso. The New Atlantis and the City of the Sun:  Two Classic Utopias. New York: Dover, 2003. Print.