Machiavellian Rhetoric

By Victoria Ann Kahn and Victoria Kahn

Historians of political thought have argued that the real Machiavelli is the republican thinker and theorist of civic virt . 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 na ve 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.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0691034915
• ISBN13: 9780691034911
• Release Date: July 1994
• Publisher: Princeton University Press
• Length: 336 Pages
• Weight: 1.50 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 7.8" x 10.0"