Interpretive ironies in More’s translations of two Lucianic dialogues

The Lucianic dialogue Cynicus has often been criticized as an unconvincing (and therefore spurious) defense of the philosophy of its title character. I argue that the dialogue deliberately undercuts its characters in humorous ways that guide us to spot their errors, without letting us dismiss anyone's claims entirely. We are meant to learn to separate the good and true from the false and misleading, which is not the same as picking a character to agree with. Thomas More translates Cynicus along with two other Lucianic dialogues, and, in his dedicatory Letter to Thomas Ruthall, describes Cynicus as a straightforward and successful defense of Christian asceticism. More goes so far as to claim that John Chrysostom based a homily on it. More's letter has been criticized as an accidental or deliberate misrepresentation of Cynicus motivated by a desire to make it palatable to censorious readers. I argue that More's treatment of Cynicus, while sincerely appreciative, does not miss its ironies, and even imitates them in its description of the work. More follows Cynicus with his translation of Lucian's Menippus, whose title character's costume recalls the Cynic and whose penchant for telling ironic lies should make us reconsider the Cynic's credibility, if we had trusted him before. More's own translation of Menippus makes subtle changes that invert his dubious claims about Chrysostom and humorously insert Christian advice into the mouth of Lucian's Tiresias in Hades, ironically baptizing the dialogue in a way that is somehow both Christian and Lucianic after all.