Machiavellian rhetoric : from the Counter-Reformation to Milton / Victoria Kahn.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Kahn, Victoria Ann.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Rhetoric--History.

Rhetoric.

Politics and literature.

Machiavelli, Niccolò, 1469-1527--Political and social views.

Machiavelli, Niccolò.

Machiavelli, Niccolò, 1469-1527--Criticism and interpretation.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (xiv, 314 pages)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Princeton, N.J. : Princeton University Press, c1994.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

Historians of political thought have argued that the real Machiavelli is the republican thinker and theorist of civic virtù. Machiavellian Rhetoric argues in contrast that Renaissance readers were right to see Machiavelli as a Machiavel, a figure of force and fraud, rhetorical cunning and deception. Taking the rhetorical Machiavel as a point of departure, Victoria Kahn argues that this figure is not simply the result of a naïve misreading of Machiavelli but is attuned to the rhetorical dimension of his political theory in a way that later thematic readings of Machiavelli are not. Her aim is to provide a revised history of Renaissance Machiavellism, particularly in England: one that sees the Machiavel and the republican as equally valid--and related--readings of Machiavelli's work. In this revised history, Machiavelli offers a rhetoric for dealing with the realm of de facto political power, rather than a political theory with a coherent thematic content; and Renaissance Machiavellism includes a variety of rhetorically sophisticated appreciations and appropriations of Machiavelli's own rhetorical approach to politics. Part I offers readings of The Prince, The Discourses, and Counter-Reformation responses to Machiavelli. Part II discusses the reception of Machiavelli in sixteenth-and seventeenth-century England. Part III focuses on Milton, especially Areopagitica, Comus, and Paradise Lost.

Contents:

Front matter

Contents

Preface

Acknowledgments

Abbreviations and Note on Spelling and Translations

Introduction

Part One: Machiavelli

One: The Prince

Two: The Discourses

Three: Rhetoric and Reason of State: Botero's Reading of Machiavelli

Part Two: English Machiavellism

Four: Reading Machiavelli, 1550-1640

Five: Machiavellian Debates, 1530-1660

Part Three: Milton

Six: A Rhetoric of Indifference

Seven: Virtue and Virtù in Comus

Eight: Machiavellian Rhetoric in Paradise Lost

Coda: Rhetoric and the Critique of Ideology

Appendix: A Brief Note on Rhetoric and Republicanism in the Historiography of the Italian Renaissance

Notes

Index

Notes:

Bibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph

Includes bibliographical references (p. [249]-310) and index.

ISBN:

9781400821280

1400821282

9781400812257

1400812259

OCLC:

179121620