Investigation of major topics, genres, and authors in Italian literature and culture of the 15th and 16th centuries.

Machiavelli's Prince is probably the most widely-read political treatise in the world today. This course will provide an in-depth, close reading of Machiavelli’s short book (around 75 pages) by working in two directions. On one hand, I will use The Prince as a starting point to introduce and discuss some key aspects of Renaissance culture and civilization (literary genres, the economy of patronage, medical knowledge, rhetoric, jurisprudence, military techniques and theory, education, etc.) with the help of a wide range of visual aids (paintings, maps, graphs, city plans, diagrams, etc.). On the other hand, I will discuss Machiavelli’s relevance and vitality for contemporary political theory, both in the US and in Europe, where we are in the middle of a true “neo-Machiavellian wave” (especially evident in the last ten years or so). In fact, Machiavelli still has much to teach us – but only if we learn to read him through his own categories and avoid the old catchphrases still too often repeated to summarize his thought (“the ends justify the means,” “the separation of politics from ethics,” “the birth of political realism,” “the Galileo of politics”…). Given this cross-eyed approach (history + theory), the way we’ll read The Prince could be described as “historical means to a conceptual goal.

Credit Restrictions

Students taking this course for 2 units do not write a final paper and may enroll in the course on a <satisfactory/unsatisfactory> basis.

Repeat Rules