Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-jkksz Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-23T10:59:28.989Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Writing and the Paradox of the Self: Machiavelli’s Literary Vocation*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 November 2018

John Bernard
John Bernard*
Affiliation:
University of Houston, The Honors College
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

The respective roles of virtù and fortuna, never resolved in his political writings, are critical to understanding Machiavelli’s literary evolution. As his letters suggest, in the years between the fall of the Soderini republic and his reentry into public life with Mandragola, Machiavelli came to understand the power of language to impose order on the anarchy of events. The fragmentary L’Asino records his discovery that writing can achieve an agency denied to princes. Mandragola’s dialectic between the author and his protagonist demonstrates that the inventive plasticity of the writer is grounded in the inherent stability of the creative self.

Type
Research Article
Information
Renaissance Quarterly , Volume 59 , Issue 1 , Spring 2006 , pp. 59 - 89
Copyright
Copyright © 2006 Renaissance Society of America

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

*

This essay is an expansion of a paper delivered at the 2003 RSA conference in Toronto. The author wishes to thank his fellow panelists, Donald Beecher, Olga Zorzi Pugliese, and Raymond Waddington, as well as members of the audience, for helpful suggestions and corrections to his arguments.

References

Andrews, Richard. Scripts and Scenarios: The Performance of Comedy in Renaissance Italy. Cambridge, 1993.10.1017/CBO9780511553073CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Aretino, Pietro. Lettere. Vol. 1. Ed. Francesco Erspamer. Parma, 1995.Google Scholar
Riccardo, Bacchelli. “‘Istorico, comico, e tragico,’ ovvero Machiavelli artista.” Nuova antologia 95 (1960): 3–20.Google Scholar
Barber, Joseph A. “The Irony of Lucrezia.” Studies in Philology 82 (1985): 450–59.Google Scholar
Bardazzi, Giovanni. “Techniche narrative nel Machiavelli scrittore di lettere.” Annali della Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa: Classe di Lettere e Filosofia (1975): 1443–89.Google Scholar
Beecher, Donald A. “Machiavelli’s Mandragola and the Emerging Animateur.” Quaderni d’Italianistica 5 (1984): 171–89.Google Scholar
Behuniak-Long, Susan. “The Significance of Lucrezia in Machiavelli’s La Mandragola.” Review of Politics 51 (1989): 264–83.10.1017/S0034670500048117CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bertelli, Sergio. “When Did Machiavelli Write Mandragola?” Renaissance Quarterly 24, no. 3 (1971): 317–26.10.2307/2859587CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Caretti, Lanfranco. “Machiavelli scrittore.” Terzoprogramma 1 (1970): 49–57.Google Scholar
Clark, Richard C. “Machiavelli: Bibliographical Spectrum.” In Italy: Machiavelli “500”, 93–135. Jamaica, NY, 1970.Google Scholar
Colimore, Fifi-Dolores. “Edizioni e traduzioni della Mandragola.” Italica (1941): 18 55–59 10.2307/475818CrossRefGoogle Scholar
The Comedy and Tragedy of Machiavelli: Essays on the Literary Works. Ed. Vickie B. Sullivan. New Haven and London, 2000.Google Scholar
Cope, Jackson I. Secret Sharers in Italian Comedy: From Machiavelli to Goldoni. Durham, NC, 1996.Google Scholar
di Maria, Salvatore. “The Ethical Premises for the Mandragola’s New Society.” Italian Culture 7 (1986–89): 17–33.10.1179/itc.1986.7.1.17CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dionisotti, Carlo. “Appunti sulla Mandragola.” Belfagor 39, no. 6 (1984): 621–44.Google Scholar
Dionisotti, Carlo. “Machiavelli, Man of Letters.” Trans. Olivia Holmes. In Machiavelli and the Discourse of Literature (1993), 16–51.Google Scholar
Fazion, Paolo. “L’Asino da leggere.” In Machiavelli: L’Asino e le bestie, eds. Gian Mario Anselmi and Paolo Fazion, 25–134. Bologna, 1984.Google Scholar
Ferroni, Giulio. “Le ‘cose vane’ nelle Lettere di Machiavelli.” La rassegna della letteratura italiana 76 (1972a): 215–64.Google Scholar
Ferroni, Giulio. “Mutazione” e “riscontro” nel teatro di Machiavelli e altri saggi sulla commedia del Cinquecento. Rome, 1972b.Google Scholar
Ferroni, Giulio. “Appunti sull’ Asino di Machiavelli.” In Letteratura e critica: studi in onore di Natalino Sapegno, ed. Walter Binni, 313–45. Rome, 1975.Google Scholar
Fido, Franco. “Machiavelli 1469–1969: Politica e teatro nel badalucco di Messer Nicia.” Italica 46 (1969): 359–75.10.2307/478069CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fido, Franco. “Appunti sulla Memoria Letter-aria di Machiavelli.” Modern Language Notes 89 (1974): 1–12.Google Scholar
Fontana, Benedetto. Hegemony and Power: On the Relation between Gramsci and Machiavelli. Minneapolis, 1993.Google Scholar
Girard, René. Deceit, Desire, and the Novel: Self and Other in Literary Structure. Trans. Yvonne Frecero. Baltimore, 1961.Google Scholar
Greenblatt, Stephen. Renaissance Self-Fashioning: From More to Shakespeare. Chicago, 1970.Google Scholar
Greenwood, Richard. “Machiavelli and the Problem of Human Inflexibility.” In The Cultural Heritage of the Italian Renaissance: Essays in Honour of T. G. Griffith, ed. C. E. J. Griffiths and R. Hastings, 196–214. Lewiston, NY, 1993.Google Scholar
Harvey, Michael. “Lost in the Wilderness: Love and Longing in L’Asino.” In The Comedy and Tragedy of Machiavelli (2000), 120–37.Google Scholar
Inglese, Giorgio. “Postille machiavelliane.” La cultura 23 (1985): 229–37.Google Scholar
Kahn, Victoria. Rhetoric, Prudence, and Skepticism in the Renaissance. Ithaca, 1985.Google Scholar
Lord, Carnes. “Allegory in Machiavelli’s Mandragola.” In Political Philosophy and the Human Soul, ed. Michael Palmer and Thomas L. Pangle, 149–73. Lanham, MD, 1994.Google Scholar
Lukes, Timothy. “Fortune Comes of Age (in Machiavelli’s Literary Works).” Sixteenth-Century Journal 11 (1980): 33–50.10.2307/2539974CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Machiavelli and the Discourse of Literature. Ed. Albert Russell Ascoli and Victoria Kahn. Ithaca and London, 1993.Google Scholar
Machiavelli, Niccolò. Lettere. Ed. Franco Gaeta. Milan, 1981a.Google Scholar
Machiavelli, Niccolò. Mandragola. Trans. Mera J. Flaumenhaft. Prospect Heights, IL, 1981b.Google Scholar
Machiavelli, Niccolò. Il principe. Ed. Franco Melotti and Ettore Janni. Milan, 1982.Google Scholar
Machiavelli, Niccolò. Discorsi sopra la prima deca di Tito Livio. Ed. Giorgio Inglese. Milan, 1984a.Google Scholar
Machiavelli, Niccolò. Lettere. Vol.3 of Opere di N. Machiavelli. Ed. Franco Gaeta. Turin, 1984b.Google Scholar
Machiavelli, Niccolò. The Comedies of Machiavelli. Ed. and trans. David Sices and James B. Atkinson. Hanover, NH, and London, 1985.Google Scholar
Machiavelli, Niccolò. Machiavelli and his Friends: Their Personal Correspondence. Ed. and trans. James B. Atkinson & David Sices. Dekalb, IL, 1996a.Google Scholar
Machiavelli, Niccolò. Scritti letterari. Vol. 4of Opere di N. Machiavelli. Ed. Luigi Blasucci. Turin, 1996b.Google Scholar
Martinez, Ronald L. “The Pharmacy of Machiavelli: Roman Lucretia in Mandragola.” Renaissance Drama 14 (1983): 1–43.10.1086/rd.14.41917200CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Martinez, Ronald L. “Benefit of Absence: Machiavellian Valediction in Clizia.” In Machiavelli and the Discourse of Literature (1993), 117–44.Google Scholar
Martinez, Ronald L. “Tragic Machiavelli.” In The Comedy and Tragedy of Machiavelli (2000), 102–19.Google Scholar
Masciandaro, Franco. “Machiavelli umorista.” Il Veltro 40 (1996): 190–95.Google Scholar
Mazzeo, Jerome. “The Poetry of Power: Machiavelli’s Literary Vision.” In Italy: Machiavelli “500”,38–62. Jamaica, NY, 1970.Google Scholar
McCanles, Michael. The Discourse of Il Principe. Malibu, 1983.10.2307/1772281CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Montaigne, Michel de. Les Essais de Montaigne. Ed. Pierre Villey. 2 vols. Paris, 1978.Google Scholar
Najemy, John. Between Friends: Discourses of Power and Desire in the Machiavelli-Vettori Letters of 1513–1515. Princeton, 1993.Google Scholar
Parronchi, Alessandro. “La prima rappresentazione della Mandragola.” La bibliofilia 61 (1962): 37–86.Google Scholar
Pocock, J. G. A. The Machiavellian Moment: Florentine Political Thought and the Atlantic Republican Tradition. Princeton, 1975.Google Scholar
Radcliff-Umstead, Douglas. The Birth of Modern Comedy in Renaissance Italy. Chicago and London, 1969.Google Scholar
Raimondi, Ezio. Politica e commedia dal Beroaldo al Machiavelli. Bologna, 1972.Google Scholar
Rebhorn, Wayne A. Foxes and Lions: Machiavelli’s Confidence Men. Ithaca, 1988.Google Scholar
Richardson, Brian. “Two Notes on Machiavelli’s Asino.” Bibliothèque d’Humanisme et Renaissance 40 (1978): 137–41.Google Scholar
Ridolfi, Roberto. Studi sulle commedie del Machiavelli. Pisa, 1954.Google Scholar
Ridolfi, Roberto. The Life of Niccolò Machiavelli. Trans. Cecil Grayson. London, 1963.Google Scholar
Ridolfi, Roberto and , Paolo, Ghiglieri. “I ‘Ghiribizzi’ al Soderino.” La bibliofilia 72 (1970): 53–74.Google Scholar
Saxonhouse, Arlene W. “Comedy, Machiavelli’s Letters, and His Imaginary Republics.” In The Comedy and Tragedy of Machiavelli (2000), 57–77.Google Scholar
Schiesari, Juliana. “Libidinal Economies: Machiavelli and Fortune’s Rape.” In Desire in the Renaissance: Psychoanalysis and Literature, ed. Valeria Finucci and Regina Schwartz, 169–83. Princeton, 1994.Google Scholar
Sparacio, Francesca R. “Il processo del comico ne La Mandragola di Niccolò Machiavelli.” Romance Review 5, no. 1 (1995): 73–85.Google Scholar
Struever, Nancy S. Theory as Practice: Ethical Inquiry in the Renaissance. Chicago, 1992.Google Scholar
Sumberg, Theodore A. “La Mandragola: An Interpretation.” Journal of Politics 23 (1962): 320–40.10.2307/2126708CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Taylor, Charles. Sources of the Self: The Making of the Modern Identity. Cambridge, MA, 1989.Google Scholar
Tonelli, Franco. “Machiavelli’s Mandragola and the Signs of Power.” In Drama, Sex, and Politics, ed. James Redmond, 35–54. Cambridge, 1985.Google Scholar
Travi, Ernesto. “Giovio, gli Orti Oricellari e Machiavelli.” Testo 5 (1983): 53–61.Google Scholar
Tylus, Jane. “Theater and its Social Uses: Machiavelli’s Mandragola and the Spectacle of Infamy.” Renaissance Quarterly 53, no. 3 (2000): 656–83.10.2307/2901493CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Whitfield, J. H. “On Machiavelli’s Use of Ordine.” Italian Studies 10 (1955): 19–39.10.1179/007516355790589488CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Zanini, Adelino. “Machiavelli, l’etico contro il politico.” Belfagor 39, no. 1 (1984): 31–40.Google Scholar
Zimmermann, T. C. Price. Paolo Giovio: The Historian and the Crisis of Sixteenth-Century Italy. Princeton, 1995.10.1515/9781400821839CrossRefGoogle Scholar