Reading Of Machiavelli Research Articles

The Wisdom of the People and the Elite

Abstract John McCormick's ‘democratic’ interpretation of Machiavelli depends on the view that Machiavelli unequivocally endorses the people's moral and political wisdom over that of princes and the elite alike. Leo Strauss's interpretation of Machiavelli offers a means for appraising the anthropological basis of this reading, which is yet to appear in the scholarship. Strauss argues that Machiavelli reduces human nature to the mere desire to stay alive. The people will therefore choose whatever political option stands to offer them the best chance for survival, and, this being equivocal to them, they are just as likely to opt for democracy as they are to raise up a tyrant. From this anthropology also emerges a strand of intellectual elitism in Machiavelli, which is incompatible with what McCormick considers to be Machiavelli's staunch anti-elitism. This article therefore uses Strauss to challenge McCormick's reading of Machiavelli as a populist, arguing that McCormick exaggerates Machiavelli's populist partisanship.

A Discourse on Machiavelli’s New Rome

In the first part of the paper the author presents the key theses of Vickie Sullivan’s‎reading of Machiavelli. Sullivan argues that, in order to prevent corruption,‎Machiavelli innovatively reworks elements of Christian teaching‎for entirely temporal purposes and offers a specific, modern solution, ‘new‎Rome’, in the form of an irreligious, fearful republic which early and effectively‎punishes the ambitious few seeking to establish tyranny. In the internal‎realm of the city, the Florentine reduces class desires of the plebs and the‎greats under the common goal of acquisition. A bellicose, tumultuous republic‎satisfies the desires of all the social actors, resulting in a lasting political order.‎In the second part the author critically engages with Sullivan’s interpretation,‎drawing on Claude Lefort’s interpretation of Machiavelli. Surprisingly,‎Lefort’s groundbreaking work on Machiavelli has been absent in Straussian‎readings of the Florentine. By highlighting the authentically democratic nature‎of Machiavelli’s project, in contrast with Sullivan’s reading, an entirely‎different ‘new Rome’ arises on the horizon.

Althusser, Machiavelli, and the PCF

In this essay I consider the fundamental features of Althusser’s reading of Machiavelli in its historical development, starting from the 1962 lecture course, passing through the 1972–76 course published with the title of Machiavel et nous as well as the writings of 1977–78, concluding with the group of writings written during the 1980s. I show that any teleological reading that sees in the final writings the truth finally revealed of the path of Althusser’s reading of Machiavelli (or its inversion, that is, the path itself as a corruption of an original truth) should be rejected, and instead present the thesis that Althusser, through the figure of Machiavelli, theoretically reworks his relationship with the Party.

Gramsci and Althusser Encountering Machiavelli: Hegemony and/as New Practice of Politics

Antonio Gramsci and Louis Althusser encountered Machiavelli’s work and they both attempted to rethink the very possibility of political practice through their respective readings of the Florentine thinker. In a certain way for both Gramsci and Althusser, the reading of Machiavelli was the experimental site where they elaborated their own conceptions of politics, either in the form of Gramsci’s quest for the ‘modern Prince’, the political and organizational form of a potential hegemony of the subaltern, or in the form of Althusser’s constant redefinition of a potential new practice of politics in a communist perspective. The reading of Machiavelli was for Althusser also one of the terrains upon which he attempted to confront Gramsci, something that is particularly evident in a series of Althusser’s texts in the 1970s from Machiavelli and Us to the recently published Que faire? The aim of this article is to do a comparative reading of the approaches to Machiavelli offered by Gramsci and Althusser, focusing in particular on the tensions running through Althusser’s reading of Gramsci’s writings on Machiavelli. In particular, I will offer a reading of Althusser’s extensive criticism of Gramsci in 1977–1978, linking it to his critique of Eurocommunism. Then, I will go back to Gramsci, and in particular Notebook 13, in order to bring forward not only the aspects of Gramsci that Althusser tended to overlook but also how Gramsci is in fact thinking the very question that Althusser attempted to pose, namely that of a new practice of politics for communism.

Review Essay: Machiavelli: Radical Democratic Political Theorist?

John P. McCormick has become the leading proponent of a new democratic—or, now, “populist”—reading of Machiavelli. The authors of all three of the other books reviewed here cite McCormick as a source and inspiration; and he has written positive blurbs for their books. In Machiavellian Democracy (Cambridge University Press, 2011) McCormick argued that Machiavelli's praise of Roman “offices or assemblies that exclude the wealthiest citizens from eligibility; magistrate appointment procedures that combine lottery and election; and political trials in which the entire citizenry acts as ultimate judge over prosecutions and appeals” constitutes “a robust, extra-electoral model of elite accountability and popular empowerment” very different from, and much superior to, the aristocratic “republicanism” attributed to Machiavelli by the “Cambridge school.” In Reading Machiavelli: Scandalous Books, Suspect Engagements, and the Virtue of Populist Politics, McCormick extends his previous analysis by offering “original readings of crucial themes within … The Prince, the Discourses, and the Florentine Histories” (1–2). He also expands his critique of competing interpretations of Machiavelli and Rome by Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Leo Strauss, John Pocock, and Quentin Skinner.

The Watershed of Modern Politics: Law, Virtue, Kingship, and Consent (1300-1650) by Francis Oakley

Reviewed by: The Watershed of Modern Politics: Law, Virtue, Kingship, and Consent (1300-1650)by Francis Oakley David Wootton The Watershed of Modern Politics: Law, Virtue, Kingship, and Consent (1300-1650). By Francis Oakley. [ The Emergence of Western Political Thought in the Latin Middle Ages, Vol. 3.] (New Haven: Yale University Press. 2005. Pp. xviii, 415. $85.00. ISBN 978-0-300-19443-2.) This is the third volume of a trilogy entitled "The Emergence of Western Political Thought in the Latin Middle Ages." Oakley, who began publishing very nearly sixty years ago, has long been one of the most distinguished historians of ecclesiological and political thought in the long period, from Augustine to the English Civil War, covered by this series. This present book stands alongside Brian Tierney's Religion, Law, and the Growth of Constitutional Thought(1982) in demonstrating the growth of modern constitutionalism, and even democratic radicalism, out of the conciliarist theories of the Councils of Constance and Basel. As a general account of political thought in this three-hundred-year period the book is notable for its hostility to the arguments of Hans Baron and John Pocock and to all those who have joined them in stressing republicanism as the source of modern liberty. Quentin Skinner (with whose methodology Oakley has expressed forceful disagreement) plays a puzzling role here. Volume 2 of his Foundations of Modern Political Thought(1978) is rightly praised for grasping the importance of conciliarism, and Skinner's reading of Machiavelli as a republican is generally followed; but no work by Skinner after 1988 is cited, which means that Oakley fails to come to grips with works such as Liberty Before Liberalism(1997), which offer an alternative to the Baron/Pocock account of the central importance of republican theorizing. This omission is surely deliberate, and it is refreshing to read a book which takes a long view of the historiography, discussing histories of conciliarism from John N. Figgis to Constantin Fasolt, or even, indeed, from Melchior Goldast von Haiminsfeld to George Garnett. The bibliography is long and judicious, though my own essay on the origins of Civil War radicalism (1990) might have been of use in helping Oakley tackle the puzzling transition from the constitutionalism of a George Buchanan to the radical individualism of the Levellers. The book has two main themes. The first is relatively conventional (thanks in large part to Oakley's own previous work): modern constitutionalism is an outgrowth of conciliarism. The second emerges clearly (for this reader at least) only in the last few pages, and I found it puzzling and challenging. No reader familiar with Oakley's work will be surprised that he is a conciliarist; but it is crucial to this book that he is also (it seems) an Augustinian—hence his remarkably sympathetic account [End Page 559]of Martin Luther. Oakley's argument is that the creation of sacral kingship in the early Middle Ages and the development of a papacy claiming both sacramental and jurisdictional authority were contrary to the fundamental principle, theorized in Augustine's account of the two cities, that Christ's kingdom is not of this world. Christianity thus, when properly understood, became a force for secularization, and we owe not only modern constitutionalism but also the full separation of Church and State to the working out of the conciliarist tradition. It is thus Oakley's contention that secularization (as he understands the term) is not contrary to, but inseparable from, sound ecclesiology. He repeatedly quotes Thomas Hobbes's claim that the new wine of Christianity had been poured into the empty bottles of Gentilism: Conciliarism, the Reformation, and the Puritan sects slowly wrenched apart the religious from the secular, decanting Christianity from its worldly container. This is a Catholic history which is more sympathetic to Hobbes than to Robert Bellarmine. Oakley is thus that most interesting of historians: one whose spiritual and intellectual commitments shape their understanding of the past, but do so in a way which is idiosyncratic, original, and thought-provoking. This is a fine book. David Wootton University of York Copyright © 2019 The Catholic University of America Press

The power of “wealth, nobility and men:” Inequality and corruption in Machiavelli’sFlorentine Histories

This article draws a connection between socio-economic inequality and political corruption based on a reading of Machiavelli’s Florentine Histories. Prevailing interpretations of the Histories attribute the moral corruption and civil conflict Machiavelli condemns as the source of Florence’s republican failure to the unique historical conditions of early-modern Florence. In this article, I trace Florentine corruption and factionalism to the perennial problem of inequality. Through his narration of the two centuries of Florentine history leading up to Cosimo de Medici’s ascent to first citizen, I contend, Machiavelli demonstrates the deleterious effect of inequality on the social relations, organizational forms, and modes of collective action in Florence. At the same time, his depiction of Florence’s transformation from a quasi-feudal commune dominated by a nobility with private armies to a modern commercial city ruled through patronage illustrates the contingent modality of inequality and the particularly subversive way it can manifest in the more civil republics of the modern era.

Can Political Authority be Founded on a Ruse? Derrida and Lefort on Machiavelli’s Use of Political Deception

The institution of Hobbes’ Leviathan is marked by the transformation of cunning, equally shared by all in the state of nature, into a rational, sovereign politics. The question I take up here by way of Machiavelli and two of his contemporary readers, Derrida and Lefort, what if cunning was politicized rather than replaced by sovereign reason? In other words, what if cunning, a complex political deception, was not abandoned or given over to the sovereign? I argue that Lefort’s reading of Machiavelli, embracing as it does the central role of a shared cunning or ruse between the people and the prince, offers valuable resources for thinking the foundation of political authority for a secular democratic politics, while in contrast, Derrida’s critique of Machiavelli’s cunning illuminates why he is not able to escape a sovereign, theological foundation for political authority and the law.

Machiavelli’s il Principe and the Politics of Glory*

This article offers a reading of Machiavelli’s il Principe and its relationship to his Discorsi which defends, first, the coherence of Machiavelli’s appeal to the figure of the one-man ordinatore and, second, a republican interpretation of il Principe. Its particular focus is on the pivotal role played in Machiavelli’s text-act by ‘love of worldly glory’. It is argued, first, that it is through love of glory that Machiavelli can coherently aim to produce an effective one-man ordinatore and, second, that the political education that il Principe provides to this figure leads them ineluctably to the conclusion that lasting glory can only be achieved through the foundation of a republic.

Rearticulating recoveries of importance: A reading of Walker’s Strauss’ Machiavelli

This article argues that a productive way of studying the legacy of Machiavelli in contemporary international politics is to study works that have sought to assess this legacy already. In effect, we should acknowledge that Machiavelli’s legacy is generally mediated by influential previous readings. I make this argument on textual mediation by engaging the assessment of Machiavelli’s legacy in Walker’s Inside/Outside and After the Globe, Before the World. More precisely, the article documents and analyzes the intertwinement of Walker’s reading of Machiavelli with (and mostly against) that of Leo Strauss. Both Walker and Strauss are concerned with the relationship between Machiavelli’s claims and the notion of a tradition, be it of political philosophy or of international relations. While Walker claims that Machiavelli should be recovered from Straussian accounts of modernity as a radically new order, Strauss claimed that Machiavelli himself should be recovered from his heirs in order to recover from the crisis that he initiated. Crucially, Machiavelli’s own reading of Roman history can be read as a creative recovery, both in the archeological and in the therapeutic sense of the word.

Leyendo a Claude Lefort: tras el rastro de Leo Strauss

It might seem outlandish to examine the theoretical links between the work of Claude Lefort, a left-wing French student of democracy, and Leo Strauss, the radical critic of modern mass democracy, usually associated with conservativism in North American political thought. Nonetheless, every reader of Lefort is certainly aware of his respect for Strauss’s reading of Machiavelli and for the Straussian insights into modern political thought. This article tries to make sense of Lefort’s dialogue with Strauss, both in its explicit and implicit aspects, focusing on the fundamental points of agreement and on the most relevant differences between the two authors.

Althusser and Italy: A Two-Fold Challenge to Gramsci and Della Volpe

During the 1960s, the “exchange” between Louis Althusser and Italian Marxist philosophers developed around the theme of the autonomy of Marxism. Harmony between the theories of Althusser and Galvano Della Volpe (and his students) was short-lived, and there was a definitive break around the relationship between science and ideology. The chief intermediary for introducing Althusser's thought to Italy was Cesare Luporini, a philosopher and an active member of the Italian Communist Party who brought For Marx and Reading Capital to Italy. Althusser's grappling with Gramsci was constant, and after the critiques of historicist Marxism, the author of Prison Notebooks came to hold influence over the French philosopher with regard to political matters. As Althusser's thought developed, considerable weight was also held by the reading, mediated by Gramsci, of the works of Niccolò Machiavelli, which consolidated his relationship with Italian political and philosophical culture. Althusser managed to catch a glimpse of the philosophical significance of the Gramscian conception of reality as relations of forces (the philosophy of praxis) beyond the historicist and humanist schema within which he had enclosed Gramsci in Reading Capital. But his reading of Machiavelli would develop in the direction of so-called aleatory materialism, also because to Althusser (for deeply-held political reasons: his attachment to classism and to the division of the world into two adversarial camps), the Gramscian category of hegemony would always remain extraneous.

Leer a Maquiavelo, traducir el Corán: Muḥammad, príncipe y legislador en el <i>Alcorano di Macometto</i> (Venecia, 1547)

This article focuses on L’Alcorano di Macometto , written by Giovanni Battista Castrodardo from Belluno (1588 ca.-1517 ca.), and published by Andrea Arrivabene at Venice in 1547. Although this text is considered to be a paraphrase of the Latin translation of the Qur’ān made by Robert of Ketton (1143 AD), a closer look shows that it was a handy pocket encyclopedia of the history of Islam and the Ottoman empire. Following a suggestion of Alessandro D’Ancona (1889), I analyze the historical texts published in the introduction to the Alcorano and especially Castrodardo’s biography of the prophet Muḥammad. This biography includes a prayer addressed to Muḥammad through the character of the monk Sergio-Bahīrā in order to persuade him to dethrone Emperor Heraclius. A deep linguistic analysis of this speech sheds light on Castrodardo’s reading of Machiavelli. While this new portrayal of Muhammad is based on medieval sources, it presents the Prophet of Islam as a distinctly Renaissance Prince, a lawgiver and a “Prophet Armed”. It also reflects the pro-Ottoman and anti-Imperial hopes of Italian circles linked to the French embassy in Venice.

From Choice to Necessity: Putting Politics in Command

This paper attempts to explore the effects of the political developments that followed the financial crisis of 2008, particularly after the uprisings of 2011, on the field of philosophy and more specifically on philosophical practice. Philosophical practice concerns not only methodology and forms of argumentation but also and mainly the dispositive of the philosopher him/herself, that is the place he/she occupies and from which h/she speaks. Drawing from Gramsci’s and Althusser’s reading of Machiavelli an argument is developed according to which certain conjunctures produce the possibility of a void both at the political and the philosophical level; a void which can disrupt the normal reproduction of political relations of power and of the dominant philosophical discourse. The task of materialist philosophy, which in those circumstances becomes even more urgent, is not to devote itself in securing the piece on the field of the philosophical and political battle but in contrast to point out the possibility of the emergence of the void and articulate philosophical positions aimed to intensify the rupture and thus to produce effects tending to realise the possibility of radical change.

Anti-Machiavellism as constitutionalism: Hermann Conring's commentary on Machiavelli's The Prince

In his Animadversiones on Machiavelli's The Prince (1661), Hermann Conring, one of the most famous of the early modern German professors of politics, further developed the constitutional reading of Machiavelli's The Prince, following in the footsteps of Bodin and the German political theorists of the previous generation such as Arnisaeus, Contzen, and Besold. For Conring, Machiavelli's exaggerated analysis of tyranny and his heavy emphasis on popular liberty offered not so much a realist political science but a dangerous prelude to the monarchomachic theory of popular sovereignty and a fatalistic concession to sin. Conring, a committed Aristotelian with Arminian sympathies, preferred a more empirical constitutional analysis (and a theory of the state) which did not favor any particular faction of the state (i.e. the people over the nobility) as the unique source of stability or instability and which explained the necessity for wickedness as the result of poor constitutional design rather than a realistic view of human nature and fate.

Machiavellian Democratic Innovations: McCormick's People's Tribunate

Machiavellian Democratic Innovations:McCormick's People's Tribunate Graham Smith (bio) and David Owen (bio) In Machiavellian Democracy,1 John McCormick offers an intriguing re-reading of Machiavelli's commitment to democracy and his suggestions for institutional reform. Central to this re-interpretation is a distinction that Machiavelli draws between the humours of patricians and plebians: the interests of the political-economic elite lie in the domination of common citizens; the interests of common citizens are in avoiding such domination. In order for common citizens to protect their interests within the republic, institutions need to be crafted that give them the power to hold elites accountable for their actions, through for example the power to veto and propose legislation and to sanction official misbehaviour. Most of the book focuses on Machiavelli's analysis of the political situation in Florence and his celebration of the Roman tribunes. However, in the last chapter McCormick draws lessons from Machiavelli's insights to provide a provocative institutional design to remedy specific contemporary democratic ills. And for McCormick, these democratic deficits are not so different from those faced by pre-modern republics: first, "the absence of extra-electoral means by which the general citizenry renders political elites accountable;" and second, "the lack of a quasi-formal distinction between economic-political elites and common citizens."2 [End Page 203] To this end, Machiavellian Democracy concludes with a provocative suggestion for institutional reform: I propose the establishment of a People's Tribunate of fifty-one lottery-selected, nonwealthy citizens who would wield powers reminiscent of those entrusted to the Roman tribunes for one-year non-renewable terms.3 McCormick makes clear that this is a thought experiment "intended to contribute in a constructive way to the burgeoning literature and practical trend in institutional reform . . . . This is a heuristic proposal intended for critical but not necessarily practical purposes; it is meant to be loosely instructive rather than strictly prescriptive."4 This commentary attempts two things. First, it sketches McCormick's reading of Machiavelli and explores the contemporary salience of Machiavelli's argument on the significance of the humours. Second, it brings McCormick's institutional thought experiment into dialogue with current trends in institutional design, in particular what is often termed 'democratic innovations': institutions that aim to increase and deepen citizen participation in political decision making.5 This is arguably one of the most vibrant areas of analysis in institutional design and McCormick's proposal provides a valuable vantage point from which we can interrogate the assumptions and limits of the current trajectory of this area of work. I. A central feature of Machiavelli's break with the traditional reading of the history of the Roman Republic is his insistence that the institutionalisation of class conflict was central to the longevity and robustness of the Republic. This remains a controversial claim but, for Machiavelli, the nobles and plebians are characterised by distinct 'humours' that arise from their relational constitution as opposed class/status groups. This feature is fundamental to McCormick's compelling re-interpretation of Machiavelli and to the conclusions that he draws from Machiavelli's thought. There are three central strands to this re-interpretation. The first explores the rhetorical and political character of The Discourses as a text which aims to persuade its youthful grandi dedicatees that the [End Page 204] Roman Republican model (rather than the Venetian model) offers the best bet for wealth and glory, and to show that, at least in some important areas, the wisdom of the people can be held to exceed that of the few. The second addresses Machiavelli's analysis of the class-bias of the seemingly neutral character of general, especially elected, bodies and the importance for political liberty and equality of both class-specific institutions such as the Tribunate from which the nobili were excluded and other mechanisms such as political trials when these were genuinely participatory. McCormick's basic claim here is that Machiavelli shows us that the aristocratic effect and privileged access to resources and information enjoyed by magistrates in modern republics render elections inadequate mechanisms of elite accountability and responsiveness; moreover, a socio-political definition of the "the people" that includes wealthy citizens, rather than...

The Ferocity of Hope: Accountability and the People's Tribunate in <i>Machiavellian Democracy</i>

In Machiavellian Democracy, John McCormick elegantly highlights the “ferocious populism” inherent in Machiavelli’s writings. McCormick distinguishes his reading from that of the Cambridge School, emphasizing that interpreting Machiavelli within the republican tradition fails to do justice to Machiavelli’s anti-elitism. Whereas republicanism both in its historical and contemporary forms is in many respects compatible with aristocratic rule and hostile to popular agency, McCormick’s reading of Machiavelli affirms the importance of institutions designed to give the people—the economic lower classes in particular—a means of keeping elites accountable and an active role in political life. The book is divided into three sections. The first is largely interpretive, focusing on arguments for popular participation in the Prince and the Discourses; the second discusses Machiavelli’s analysis of the way in which institutions structure the motivational logic of citizens and elites in Rome and Florence in particular; and the third provides a normative critique of the aristocratic impulses of even contemporary republicanism, accompanied by institutional prescriptions for challenging elite domination along Machiavellian lines. Throughout the book, McCormick’s reading of Machiavelli is both careful and bracing, a rare combination. For instance, within the first third, the discussion of Machiavelli’s relationship with the two dedicatees of the Discourses, Cosimo Rucellai and Zanobi Buondelmonti, is especially interesting. There McCormick demonstrates persuasively that Machiavelli encourages the grandi to believe that the stability of the

Cervantes' 'Don Quixote': A Casebook by Roberto González EchevarríaUnhappily Ever after: Deceptive Idealism in Cervantes's Marriage Tales by Eric J. Kartchner

252 Reviews attack onMachiavelli, published in 1576. Despite its imperfections, it is 'the most ex tensive and systematic study ofMachiavelli undertaken in the sixteenth century, and certainly themost influential' (p. 230). Gentillet may have had very restricted abili ties,but he was 'theonly sixteenth-century political theorist ofwhom it may be said unequivocally thathis thinkingwas shaped principally by a reading ofMachiavelli' (p. 284). Some of his misinterpretations derive from his use of unreliable French translations rather than Italian originals, and his technique of reducing Machiavelli to a series of separate 'maxims' is defended (pp. 297-99). It is even possible, Anglo suggests, thatGentillet's book may have had the unintended effect of stimulating interest in Machiavelli and making him more widely known. I have a few reservations about some of the later chapters of this book-for ex ample, Chapter i6,which tries to assert thatCastiglione and his successors aremore immoral thanMachiavelli, isnot inmy view fullyconvincing or relevant-but never theless consider it tobe the most important study so far written onMachiavelli's early reputation. Deeply learned, irreverent,and pugnacious, Anglo frequently challenges stock assumptions, providing massive amounts of detailed evidence to support his arguments. (I do not remember a single use of theword 'intertextuality'.) Anyone who wants towrite on Machiavelli's relationship to a particular later author of the Renaissance should certainly read thisbook before attempting to do so. UNIVERSITY OF LIVERPOOL N. W. BAWCUTT Cervantes' 'Don Quixote': A Casebook. Ed. by ROBERTO GONZALEZ ECHEVARRiA. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 2005. XiV+28I pp. ?45. ISBN 978-0-I9 5 I6937-9. Unhappily Ever After: Deceptive Idealism inCervantes's Marriage Tales. By ERIC J. KARTCHNER. Newark, DE: Juan de laCuesta. 2005. I53 PP. ?IO.75. ISBN 978 I-5887I-075-8. Roberto Gonz'alez Echevarria has assembled a very nice collection of essays to serve as an introduction toCervantes criticism. The book begins with a perceptive intro duction which contextualizes thenovel, and this is followed by nine critical essays and a short selection of self-referentialpassages fromCervantine prologues that serves in place of the interviewwith the author that is traditionally included in books in this series. The introduction briefly assesses the timeless appeal ofDon Quixote, notes the differences between the two parts of the novel, and then summarizes the essays that follow. Seven of thenine essays are among thegreatest pieces everwritten about thenovel: Manuel Duran's brief assessment ofCervantes's life;Erich Auerbach's brilliant ana lysisof the scene of theenchanted Dulcinea; Ramon Menendez Pidal's seminal study of the genesis of the novel; E. C. Riley's subtle consideration of the relationship between literature and life;Bruce Wardropper's important essay on the concepts of story and history inCervantes's time; Leo Spitzer's great study on linguistic per spectivism; and George Haley's superb essay on the relationship between the scene ofMaese Pedro's puppet show and thenarrative structure of thenovel. These essays were all originally published between i924 and I974 and represent the very best of traditional historical and philological scholarship from themid-twentieth century. It is a pleasure to reread these great pieces and realize that they are as impressive today as theywere decades ago when firstpublished. Students reading Don Quixote either on their own or in class, whether inEnglish or Spanish, either in undergraduate or graduate classes, have much to learn from thesemasters. Accompanying theclassics are twonew essays, one byGonz'alez Echevarria himself MLR, I02.1, 2007 253 and one by his formerstudentGeorgina Dopico Black. The latterprovides both a good historical review of the concepts of books, libraries, and censorship inCervantes's timeand amore modern consideration of canon and empire. The editor's contribution deals with optics, vision, and authorship.Whether or not thepostmodern styleand ap proach of these twocarefully crafted pieces will stand the testof time as have theother essays in thevolume is a question that can only be answered a fewdecades fromnow. Eric J.Kartchner's book is a brief but penetrating examination ofmetafictional elements in fiveof Cervantes's novelas ejemplares that deal with marriage. After a brief introduction, thebook opens with a theoretical chapter on thenature ofmetafic tion and an excellent chapter (the longest in the book) on the critical history of...

Machiavelli: The First Century. Studies in Enthusiasm, Hostility, and Irrelevance by Sydney Anglo

MLR, 102. I, 2007 25I of theprotagonist in theParadiso should be seen as thatof the progressive 'transfor mation of his body into a resurrected body' (p. 176). SHINSHU UNIVERSITY DAVID RUZICKA Machiavelli: The First Century. Studies inEnthusiasm, Hostility, and Irrelevance. By SYDNEY ANGLO. (Oxford-Warburg Studies) Oxford: Oxford University Press. 2005. x+765 PP. ?8o. ISBN 978-0-I9-926776-7. This is a very impressive book. It deals with the response to Machiavelli in Western Europe from the the early sixteenth to the early seventeenth century. It is the result ofmany years' work and the reading of literallyhundreds of contemporary books and pamphlets, mainly inLatin, English, French, and Italian, aswell as a large amount of recent scholarship on the subject. This learning iscarried fairly lightly,and thewrit ing is crisp and lucid. Those familiarwith Sydney Anglo's earlier study, Machiavelli: A Dissection (London: Gollancz, I969), will know thathe isno hero-worshipper, and his comments on authors are frequentlypungent and enlivening. (I will leave readers to discover for themselves the ratherdreadful joke on page 499.) At the same time, thosewho approach the book having read earlier discussions by scholars such asMario Praz, Felix Raab, and Emile Gasquet, may be slightly dis concerted byAnglo's choice ofmaterials. He is interested inwriters who show a real and serious engagement with the detail ofMachiavelli's arguments, and are deeply influenced by him, and he tends to ignore two contrasting extremes of response. One of these includes thehundreds ofwriters who make merely a brief passing reference to him, even if it is specific and accurate. Still less does he bother with the 'Machi avel' bogeyman found in Elizabethan and Jacobean drama, and the only plays he treats at any length areMarlowe's The Yew of Malta, because of itsprologue spoken byMachiavel, and Barnabe Barnes's The Devil's Charter, perhaps because Barnes's personal copy of II principe, in Wolfe's edition of I584, still survives. (He seems not to know thatBarnes also owned theDiscorsi-see 'Barnabe Barnes's Ownership of Machiavelli's Discorsi', Notes and Queries, 227 (I982), 4 I.) The other extreme concerns major writers of theperiod-Bodin and Montaigne, Ralegh and Bacon-who can be shown to have readMachiavelli with insight and intelligence. Anglo does not discuss any of them at length, because he considers the Machiavellian influence tohave been only a very small part of theirextensive learning, and ithas not yet been demonstrated that they would have been significantlydifferent if Machiavelli had never existed. Even thegreatwriters themselves sometimes provoke caustic remarks from Anglo-he endorses J. W. Allen' sjudgement ofBodin (AHistory ofPolitical Thought in theSixteenth Century (London: Methuen, 1928), p. 404) as a 'bore' (p. 548), and asserts thatBacon's achievements in the fieldsof law,science, and politics, despite his undoubtedly great abilities, were 'strictlylimited' (p. 647). As a result of this approach, there are some surprises in the choice of authors for discussion. Most readers (including the present reviewer) will not have heard of, let alone read, the I605 elaborately annotated translation into French by Blaise de Vi genere of the treatise on the art ofwar by Onosander, written inGreek in the first century AD. But Vigenere was deeply, and often intelligently, influenced byMachi avelli's writings, especially theA rtedella guerra, so he receives an extended treatment stretching to sixteen pages. Agostino Nifo's De regnandiperitia (I523) is sometimes dismissed as a crude plagiarism of II principe, but Anglo considers the relationship between the twoworks to be much more subtle and interesting, and gives Nifo a separate forty-page chapter tohimself. At theheart of thebook isa very substantial account of Innocent Gentillet' sfamous 252 Reviews attack onMachiavelli, published in 1576. Despite its imperfections, it is 'the most ex tensive and systematic study ofMachiavelli undertaken in the sixteenth century, and certainly themost influential' (p. 230). Gentillet may have had very restricted abili ties,but he was 'theonly sixteenth-century political theorist ofwhom it may be said unequivocally thathis thinkingwas shaped principally by a reading ofMachiavelli' (p. 284). Some of his misinterpretations derive from his use of unreliable French translations rather than Italian originals, and his technique of reducing Machiavelli to a series of separate 'maxims' is defended (pp. 297-99...

Machiavelli's The Prince as Memoir

A major tendency among recent interpretations of The Prince has been to raise serious doubts about whether the text adequately established (even in Machiavelli's own considered judgment) what, in Thomas M. Greene's question, was a calculus capable of scientific coherence. The view that The Prince was simply an exercise in practical political wisdom rooted in an historical theory of imitable examples can no longer be treated as indisputable. Greene's answer to his own question can stand for what has come increasingly to be the contemporary view of Machiavelli's exemplary reckoning. 'The determination, he writes, proves to be negative: analysis leading to precept is progressively abandoned . . . scientific pretensions are quietly withdrawn as the semblance of conclusive law fades from the text. There emerges, in Greene's reading of Machiavelli's text, a disturbing gap between example and precept.2 From each of several quite different points of view, recent students of Machiavelli's use of examples have all concluded that the connection between the historical materials that Machiavelli narrates and the maxims