Seeking Real Truths: Multidisciplinary Perspectives on Machiavelli PDF Download

Author: Patricia Vilches
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9047421132
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 467

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Book Description
The thought and influence of Machiavelli have had a significant impact on a variety of academic disciplines, including political science and government, history, literature, language, theatre, and philosophy. Rather than inscribe Machiavelli within the boundaries of a single academic approach, tradition, or discourse, this volume assembles multidisciplinary perspectives on his writings on government, on his creative works, and on his legacy. The result is intended to appeal at once to generalists seeking baseline knowledge of Machiavelli and to specialists who are interested in critical views of Machiavelli that use a broad lens and that approach their subject from different angles. Contributors include: Susan Ashley, Salvatore Bizzarro, Julia Bondanella, JoAnn Cavallo, Salvatore Di Maria, Marie Gaille-Nikodimov, Eugene Garver, Joseph Khoury, William Klein, Sante Matteo, Gerry Milligan, RoseAnna Mueller, John Roe, Gerald Seaman, Charles Tarlton, Patricia Vilches, and Mary Walsh.

Author: Patricia Vilches
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
ISBN: 1443862258
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 350

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Book Description
This book analyzes the work of iconic Chilean author Alberto Blest Gana (1830–1920) through the lens of Machiavelli and Cervantes. Transatlantic in scope, it uses literary studies and cultural history to delve into Chile’s emergence as a nation and to illustrate a set of conflicts among the political parties and social classes in the early days of independence, the 1830s and 1850s. With a focus on Martín Rivas: Novela de costumbres politico-sociales [Martin Rivas: A Novel of Socio-Political Manners] (1862), El ideal de un calavera [The Ideal of a Rogue/Libertine] (1863), and Durante la Reconquista [During the Re-Conquest] (1897), this study examines the political and social exchanges and the place of social order in a critical period in Chile’s national development. Blest Gana’s three novels vividly depict the whys and hows of Chile’s early political struggles, dramatically underscoring the painfully real and very deep disagreements about the nation’s early direction and sense of identity, and showing how political and cultural antagonisms resulted from social hierarchies. For some, patria was synonymous with order itself; order needed to be established and maintained no matter how severe the measures. The book is informed by a desire to use early narrative expressions of Chile’s national identity to illuminate the political and cultural heritage of the twentieth century, especially the disruptions that occurred during the government and ultimate ousting of Salvador Allende Gossens (1908–1973), president of Chile from 1970 to 1973. In Blest Gana’s three texts, the enmities among Chileans reveal a fundamental and ongoing social, political and cultural disunity. This crack in the national foundation accounts in part for what erupted during the government of Allende, an idealist and a quixotic individual who believed in socialism via democracy and fought for equality in society. Betrayed from all sides, Allende was violently removed from power by a military junta led by Augusto Pinochet Ugarte (1915–2006), who ruled from 1973 to 1990. Under Pinochet’s dictatorship, books and print materials were scrutinized and censored in a way that was not unlike the period when Cervantes published the first and second parts of Don Quijote. Martín Rivas, however, continued to be read in schools, but mostly as a love story, with its political commentary effectively concealed.

Author: Alessandra Petrina
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317102916
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 310

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Book Description
Machiavelli in the British Isles reassesses the impact of Machiavelli's The Prince in sixteenth-century England and Scotland through the analysis of early English translations produced before 1640, surviving in manuscript form. This study concentrates on two of the four extant sixteenth-century versions: William Fowler's Scottish translation and the Queen's College (Oxford) English translation, which has been hitherto overlooked by scholars. Alessandra Petrina begins with an overview of the circulation and readership of Machiavelli in early modern Britain before focusing on the eight surviving manuscripts. She reconstructs each manuscript's history and the afterlife of the translations before moving to a detailed examination of two of the translations. Petrina's investigation of William Fowler's translation takes into account his biography, in order to understand the Machiavellian influence on early modern political thought. Her study of the Queen's College translation analyses the manuscript's provenance as well as technical details including writing and paper quality. Importantly, this book includes annotated editions of both translations, which compare the texts with the original Italian versions as well as French and Latin versions. With this volume Petrina has compiled an important reference source, offering easy access to little-known translations and shedding light on a community of readers and scholars who were fascinated by Machiavelli, despite political or religious opinion.

Author: Christopher Holman
Publisher: University of Toronto Press
ISBN: 1487519109
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 320

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Book Description
Presenting a detailed reinterpretation and reconstruction of the political thought of Niccolò Machiavelli, Machiavelli and the Politics of Democratic Innovation uses original readings of Machiavelli’s texts to develop a new theoretical model of democratic practice. The book critically and creatively juxtaposes certain concepts drawn from Machiavelli’s work in order to produce new political insights. Christopher Holman identifies two unique ideas in Machiavelli through his rearrangement of Machiavellian concepts. The first, drawn primarily from The Prince, is an image of the individual human being as a creative subject that seeks the exteriorization of desire via political creation. The second, drawn primarily from The Discourses on Livy, is an image of the democratic republic as a form of regime in which this desire for creative self-expression is universalized, all citizens being able to affirm their psychic orientation toward innovation through their equal access to political institutions and orders. Such institutions and orders, to the extent that they function as media for the expression of a fundamental human creativity, must be arranged so that they are capable of continual interrogation and refinement. In the final instance, a new ethical ground for the normative defense of democratic life is constructed, one grounded in the orientation of individual beings toward novelty and innovation.

Author: David Johnston
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 022642944X
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 430

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Book Description
More than five hundred years after Machiavelli wrote The Prince, his landmark treatise on the pragmatic application of power remains a pivot point for debates on political thought. While scholars continue to investigate interpretations of The Prince in different contexts throughout history, from the Renaissance to the Risorgimento and Italian unification, other fruitful lines of research explore how Machiavelli’s ideas about power and leadership can further our understanding of contemporary political circumstances. With Machiavelli on Liberty and Conflict, David Johnston, Nadia Urbinati, and Camila Vergara have brought together the most recent research on The Prince, with contributions from many of the leading scholars of Machiavelli, including Quentin Skinner, Harvey Mansfield, Erica Benner, John McCormick, and Giovanni Giorgini. Organized into four sections, the book focuses first on Machiavelli’s place in the history of political thought: Is he the last of the ancients or the creator of a new, distinctly modern conception of politics? And what might the answer to this question reveal about the impact of these disparate traditions on the founding of modern political philosophy? The second section contrasts current understandings of Machiavelli’s view of virtues in The Prince. The relationship between political leaders, popular power, and liberty is another perennial problem in studies of Machiavelli, and the third section develops several claims about that relationship. Finally, the fourth section explores the legacy of Machiavelli within the republican tradition of political thought and his relevance to enduring political issues.

Author: Jennifer Forestal
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000283402
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 204

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Book Description
The Wives of Western Philosophy examines the lives and experiences of the wives and women associated with nine distinct political thinkers—from Socrates to Marx—in order to explore the gendered patterns of intellectual labor that permeate the foundations of Western political thought. Organized chronologically and representative of three eras in the history of political thought (Ancient, Early Modern, and Modern), nine critical biographical chapters explore the everyday acts of intellectual labor and partnership involving these "wives of the canon." Taking seriously their narratives as intimate partners reveals that wives have labored in remarkable ways throughout the history of political thought. In some cases, their labors mark the conceptual boundaries of political life; in others, they serve as uncredited resources for the production of political ideas. In all instances, however, these wives and intimates are pushed to the margins of the history of political thought. The Wives of Western Philosophy brings these women to the center of scholarly interest. In so doing, it provides new insights into the intellectual biographies of some of the most famed men in political theory while also raising important questions about the gendered politics of intellectual labor which shape our receptions of canonical texts and thinkers, and which sustain the academy even today.

Author: Alessandro Arienzo
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317102886
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 219

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Taking into consideration the political and literary issues hanging upon the circulation of Machiavelli's works in England, this volume highlights how topics and ideas stemming from Machiavelli's books - including but not limited to the Prince - strongly influenced the contemporary political debate. The first section discusses early reactions to Machiavelli's works, focusing on authors such as Reginald Pole and William Thomas, depicting their complex interaction with Machiavelli. In section two, different features of Machiavelli's reading in Tudor literary and political culture are discussed, moving well beyond the traditional image of the tyrant or of the evil Machiavel. Machiavelli's historiography and republicanism and their influences on Tudor culture are discussed with reference to topical authors such as Walter Raleigh, Alberico Gentili, Philip Sidney; his role in contemporary dramatic writing, especially as concerns Christopher Marlowe and William Shakespeare, is taken into consideration. The last section explores Machiavelli's influence on English political culture in the seventeenth century, focusing on reason of state and political prudence, and discussing writers such as Henry Parker, Marchamont Nedham, James Harrington, Thomas Hobbes and Anthony Ascham. Overall, contributors put Machiavelli's image in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century England into perspective, analyzing his role within courtly and prudential politics, and the importance of his ideological proposal in the tradition of republicanism and parliamentarianism.

Author: Bernard J. Dobski
Publisher: Lexington Books
ISBN: 0739170961
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 288

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Book Description
mate Shakespeare’s corpus, and one of the most prominent is the image of the body. Sketched out in the eternal lines of his plays and poetry, and often drawn in exquisite detail, variations on the body metaphor abound in the works of Shakespeare. Attention to the political dimensions of this metaphor in Shakespeare and the Body Politic permits readers to examine the sentiments of romantic love and family life, the enjoyment of peace, prosperity and justice, and the spirited pursuit of honor and glory as they inevitably emerge within the social, moral, and religious limits of particular political communities. The lessons to be learned from such an examination are both timely and timeless. For the tensions between the desires and pursuits of individuals and the health of the community forge the sinews of every body politic, regardless of the form it may take or even where and when one might encounter it. In his plays and poetry Shakespeare illuminates these tensions within the body politic, which itself constitutes the framework for a flourishing community of human beings and citizens—from the ancient city-states of Greece and Rome to the Christian cities and kingdoms of early modern Europe. The contributors to this volume attend to the political context and role of political actors within the diverse works of Shakespeare that they explore. Their arguments thus exhibit together Shakespeare’s political thought. By examining his plays and poetry with the seriousness they deserve, Shakespeare’s audiences and readers not only discover an education in human and political virtue, but also find themselves written into his lines. Shakespeare’s body of work is indeed politic, and the whole that it forms incorporates us all.

Author: Andrea Polegato
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 303073823X
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 162

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Book Description
There is an undeniable and persisting fascination with Niccolò Machiavelli and his infamous political theories in contemporary pop culture. Many comic books, video games, TV series, movies, and graphic novels make explicit or implicit references to the most infamous political thinker of all-time. By offering the reader an idea of how Machiavelli is present and represented in contemporary media (in particular, in Assassin’s Creed, House of Cards, Homeland, pop art, American and Italian politics, Italian cinema, and Trump’s rise to power), Machiavelli in Contemporary Media gives new life to Machiavellian thought and shows how his theories—but also the several different interpretations of them (Machiavellianism)—are still influential today. Andrea Polegato is Assistant Professor in Italian Studies at California State University, Fresno, USA. He works on the political language of Niccolò Machiavelli and Florence between the Quattrocento and Cinquecento. His publications include articles on Machiavelli, Pietro Aretino, and the Italian filmmaker Ermanno Olmi. He is also working on a comparison between Renaissance Italy and Ancient China. Fabio Benincasa is Adjunct Professor for Duquesne University – Rome Campus and Università Nicola Cusano, Italy. As well as several essays on cinema, he co-edited Come rovesciare il mondo ad arte (2015) with Giorgio de Finis and Andrea Facchi, and with de Finis Nome plurale di città (2016), and Il mondo degli umani si è fermato (2020). He is editor of Frontiere della Psicoanalisi and has collaborated with the Museum of Contemporary Art of Rome.

Author: Fabio Raimondi
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 019881545X
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 178

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Book Description
An important new interpretation of Machiavelli's political thinking, appearing in English for the first time.