Hostname: page-component-76fb5796d-skm99 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-28T07:05:00.765Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Hunting the Fox: Equivocation and Authorial Duplicity in The Prince

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 October 2020

Stephen M. Fallon
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Machiavelli's chapter on fortuna, which distills the teachings of The Prince, promises success to the prince who will adapt to the times. But when Machiavelli adds that one can never adapt, he implicitly withdraws the promise and leaves the prince naked before fortune. While others view this chapter as the shoal on which the text's optimistic teaching runs aground, I argue that the failure is strategic; like Machiavelli's anomalous treatment of Cesare Borgia, it points to the coherence underlying an apparently inconsistent text. In appropriately Machiavellian fashion, the work is not, as it purports to be, a handbook on princely success. Instead, it represents a characteristically audacious attempt to reconcile self-serving aims: to secure the author employment, to spur the Medici on to the task of unifying Italy, and, paradoxically, to draw his prospective employers and the potential instruments of Italian glory—once they have served his threefold purpose—to their ruin.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 107 , Issue 5 , October 1992 , pp. 1181 - 1195
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1992

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.)

References

Works Cited

Burke, Kenneth. A Rhetoric of Motives. A Grammar of Motives and A Rhetoric of Motives. Cleveland: World, 1962.Google Scholar
Cassirer, Ernst. The Myth of the State. New Haven: Yale UP, 1946.Google Scholar
de Grazia, Sebastian. Machiavelli in Hell. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1989.Google Scholar
Dietz, Mary G. “Trapping the Prince: Machiavelli and the Politics of Deception.” American Political Science Review 80 (1986): 777–77.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Geerken, John H. “Machiavelli Studies since 1969.” Journal of the History of Ideas 37 (1976): 351–35.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gilbert, Felix. Machiavelli and Guicciardini: Politics and History in Sixteenth-Century Florence. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1965.Google Scholar
Greene, Thomas. “The End of Discourse in Machiavelli's Prince.” Literary Theory/Renaissance Texts. Ed. Parker, Patricia and Quint, David. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1986. 63–77.Google Scholar
Kahn, Victoria. “Virtu and the Example of Agathocles in Machiavelli's Prince.” Representations 13 (1986): 63–83.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kerrigan, William, and Braden, Gordon. The Idea of the Renaissance. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1989.Google Scholar
Machiavelli, Niccolo. The Comedies of Machiavelli. Bilingual ed. Trans. and ed. David Sices and James B. Atkinson. Hanover: UP of New England, 1985.Google Scholar
Machiavelli, Niccolo. Legazione e commissarie. Ed. Bertelli, Sergio. 3 vols. Milano: Feltrinelli, 1964.Google Scholar
Machiavelli, Niccolo. Lettere. Ed. Gaeta, Franco. Milano: Feltrinelli, 1961.Google Scholar
Machiavelli, Niccolo. Machiavelli: The Chief Works and Others. Trans. Gilbert, Allan. 3 vols. Durham: Duke UP, 1965.Google Scholar
Machiavelli, Niccolo. Opere di Niccolo Machiavelli. Ed. Raimondi, Ezio. Milano: Mursia, 1976.Google Scholar
Machiavelli, Niccolo. The Prince. A Bilingual Edition. Trans. and Ed. Musa, Mark. New York: St. Martin's, 1964.Google Scholar
Mattingly, Garrett. “Machiavelli's Prince: Political Science or Political Satire?” Machiavelli: Cynic, Patriot, or Political Scientist? Ed. Jensen, De Lamar. Boston: Heath, 1960. 98–108.Google Scholar
McCanles, Michael. The Discourse of II Principe. Humana Civilitas: Studies and Sources Relating to the Middle Ages and the Renaissance 8. Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies. Malibu: Undena, 1983.Google Scholar
Najemy, John. “Machiavelli and the Medici: The Lessons of Florentine History.” Renaissance Quarterly 35 (1982): 551–55.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pitkin, Hannah Fenichel. Fortune Is a Woman: Gender and Politics in the Thought of Niccolo Machiavelli. Berkeley: U of California P. 1984.Google Scholar
Pocock, J. G. A. The Machiavellian Moment: Florentine Political Thought and the Atlantic Republican Tradition. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1975.Google Scholar
Rebhorn, Wayne. Foxes and Lions: Machiavelli's Confidence Men. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1988.Google Scholar
Skinner, Quentin. Machiavelli. New York: Hill, 1981.Google Scholar
Stephens, J.N. “Machiavelli's Prince and the Florentine Revolution of 1512.” Italian Studies 41 (1986): 45–61.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Strauss, Leo. Thoughts on Machiavelli. Glencoe: Free, 1958.Google Scholar
Zagorin, Perez. Ways of Lying: Dissimulation, Persecution, and Conformity in Early Modern Europe. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1990.Google Scholar