Machiavelli

Catalog description

The inventor of modern political science, Niccolo Machiavelli is one of the most original thinkers in the history of Western civilization. In this course, Machiavelli?s political, historical, and theatrical works are read in the context in which they were conceived?the much tormented and exciting Florence of the 15th and early 16th centuries struggling between republican rule and the magnificent tyranny of the Medici family. The course also aims at dismantling the myth of ?evilness? that has surrounded Machiavelli through the centuries, especially in the Anglo-Saxon world, through a close reading of such masterpieces as The Prince, The Discourses, and The Mandrake Root.