Subject Guides
Italian 581E: Machiavelli's The Prince
Subject Librarian
Caryl Ward
Contact:
cward@binghamton.edu
Bartle Library LSG-684E
607-777-4926
Bartle Library LSG-684E
607-777-4926
French, Spanish and Italian
Other LibGuides
E Books
Binghamton owns many scholarly works on Machiavelli and his writings. A few e-books are listed here.
Multiple versions of The Prince are available in electronic format. To search in FIndIt! for English language editions, check OUR CATALOG and enter the term MACHIAVELLI PRINCE. The Oxford edition below is one example.
Prince, the. Oxford World's Classics by ISBN: 1280752955Publication Date: 2005-01-01A prince must not have any other object nor any other thought...but war, its institutions, and its discipline; because that is the only art befitting one who commands.' When Machiavelli's brief treatise on Renaissance statecraft and princely power was posthumously published in 1532, it generated a debate that has raged unabated until the present day. Based upon Machiavelli's first-hand experience as an emissary of the Florentine Republic to the courts of Europe, "The Prince" analyses the usually violent means by which men seize, retain, and lose political power. Machiavelli added a dimension of incisive realism to one of the major philosophical and political issues of his time, especially the relationship between public deeds and private morality. His book provides a remarkably uncompromising picture of the true nature of power, no matter in what era or by whom it is exercised. This fluent new translation is accompanied by comprehensive notes and an introduction that considers the true purpose of "The Prince" and dispels some of the myths associated with it.
Giuliano de' Medici : Machiavelli's Prince in life and art by ISBN: 0773553681Publication Date: Montreal : McGill-Queen's University Press, 2018
Reading Politics with Machiavelli by ISBN: 9780190843359Publication Date: 2018-07-02Political theorist Wendy Brown has argued recently that contemporary neoliberalism, with its relentless obsession on the economy, has all but undone the tenets of democracy. The focus on maximizing credit scores and capital has, over time, promoted a politics that operates beyond and below theinstitutional and electoral world, eroding not just the desire for democratic action but even our ability to imagine it. In light of recent politics, it seems we may have reached the apotheosis of this depressing vision.This book is meant to suggest one way of thinking past and out of the current moment, and it does so by looking to a perhaps unlikely figure: Niccolo Machiavelli. The book presents Machiavelli as an anachronistic thinker - a thinker who, deprived of his political community and public identity duringhis exile from Florence, originated a new approach to democratic theory and practice. In particular he immersed himself in the writings of ancient thinkers and looked to them as models for understanding contemporary problems of corruption, conspiracy, and torture. This book's main contribution is amethodological one: it argues that the power in Machiavelli's work derived from this sort of anachronistic reading, which went against the grain of Renaissance thought. In turn it shows that if we imitate Machiavelli's interpretive method in reading The Prince and Discourses of Livy, we can find inthem solutions to the neoliberal problems Brown warns about.
Machiavelli Goes to the Movies by ISBN: 9780739195949Publication Date: 2015-03-24Niccol Machiavelli's The Prince remains an influential book more than five centuries after he wrote his timeless classic. However, the political philosophy expressed by Machiavelli in his tome is often misunderstood. Although he thought humans to be rational, self-interested creatures, and even though he proposed an approach to politics in which the ends justify the means, Machiavelli was not, as some have argued, simply "a teacher of evil." The Prince's many ancient and medieval examples, while relevant to sixteenth century readers, are lost on most of today's students of Machiavelli. Examples from modern films and television programs, which are more familiar and understandable to contemporary readers, provide a better way to accurately teach Machiavelli's lessons. Indeed, modern media, such as Breaking Bad, The Godfather, The Walking Dead, Charlie Wilson's War, House of Cards, Argo, and The Departed, are replete with illustrations that teach Machiavelli's critical principles, including the need to caress or annihilate, learning "how not to be good," why it is better to be feared than loved, and how to act as both the lion and the fox. Modern media are used in this book to exemplify the tactics Machiavelli advocated and to comprehensively demonstrate that Machiavelli intended for government actors and those exercising power in other contexts to fight for a greater good and strive to achieve glory.
The Cambridge Companion to Machiavelli by ISBN: 052186125XPublication Date: 2010-06-24Niccolò Machiavelli (1469-1527) is the most famous and controversial figure in the history of political thought and one of the iconic names of the Renaissance. The Cambridge Companion to Machiavelli brings together sixteen original essays by leading experts, covering his life, his career in Florentine government, his reaction to the dramatic changes that affected Florence and Italy in his lifetime, and the most prominent themes of his thought, including the founding, evolution, and corruption of republics and principalities, class conflict, liberty, arms, religion, ethics, rhetoric, gender, and the Renaissance dialogue with antiquity. In his own time Machiavelli was recognized as an original thinker who provocatively challenged conventional wisdom. With penetrating analyses of The Prince, Discourses on Livy, Art of War, Florentine Histories, and his plays and poetry, this book offers a vivid portrait of this extraordinary thinker as well as assessments of his place in Western thought since the Renaissance.
Machiavelli's Prince: A new reading by ISBN: 9780199653638Publication Date: 2014-01-21Why did Machiavelli write the Prince - and why did Church and political authorities find it so threatening? Five hundred years after Machiavelli first told friends that he had written a "little work" on principalities, this book tries to answer these questions. It offers a chapter-by-chapterreading of the Prince as a masterwork of ironic writing with a moral purpose: to teach readers how to recognise hidden dangers in political conduct that appears great or praiseworthy, and in misleading promises of quick and easy solutions to their troubles. The Prince uses irony to hint at theproblematic character of many princely actions it seems to praise. At the same time, it provokes readers to work out more prudent ways to gain political power and build effective defences. Far from eroding ancient contrasts between good and evil, tyranny and freedom, Machiavelli's unjustly infamous'little book' suggests that dire consequences ensue when our language and practices fail to distinguish them.In this lively and engaging new reading, Erica Benner helps readers see beyond surface appearances in the text by learning to identify signs of ironic dissimulation. The book outlines Machiavelli's most important ironic techniques, including the use of normatively coded words to signal praise orblame. Once recognised, these methods provide clues to the Prince's less obvious messages - and help explain why Rousseau and other early readers considered it "the book of republicans."
The Routledge Guidebook to Machiavelli's the Prince by ISBN: 9780415707268Publication Date: 2016-04-05Niccolò Machiavelli's The Prince is one of the most influential works in the history of political thought and the adjective Machiavellian is well-known and perhaps even over-used. So why does the meaning of the text continue to be debated to the present day? And how does a contemporary reader get to grips with a book full of references to the politics of the early 16th Century? The Routledge Guidebook to Machiavelli's The Prince provides readers with the historical background, textual analysis, and other relevant information needed for a greater understanding and appreciation of this classic text. This guidebook introduces: the historical, political and intellectual context in which Machiavelli was working the key ideas developed by Machiavelli throughout the text and the examples he uses to illustrate them the relationship of The Prince to The Discourses and Machiavelli's other works Featuring a timeline, maps and suggestions for further reading throughout, this book is an invaluable guide for anyone who wants to be able to engage more fully with The Prince.
Finding Scholarly Resources
What is a peer reviewed or scholarly article?
It is an article written by an identifiable expert in the field, for experts in the field, that has undergone a evaluation process to ensure the quality of the research and methodology They are usually identified by certain characteristics, seen on What is a Scholarly Journal?
Identifying Scholarly Materials
In order to read scholarly materials accurately, you first need to be able to identify them. Let's look at the most common attributes of scholarly materials.
- Aesthetics: As opposed to popular sources, scholarly materials aren't as flashy. You'll see fewer images and decorative elements. Every part of a scholarly source has a purpose.
- Audience: Scholarly articles are written for scholars and experts in a specific research field and can include a wide variety of disciplines, including the sciences, social sciences, humanities, and other subjects.
- Authority: Authors of published scholarly materials are experts in their fields, have credentials and affiliations to prove their authority, and can pass the peer-review process.
- Jargon: Special terminology and language specific to a particular field of study is called jargon.
- Peer Review: In scholarly materials, peer review is the evaluation of sources (usually articles) submitted for publication by researchers in the same discipline.
Tips for Reading Scholarly Materials
- Start by reading the introduction to get a sense of the author's purpose or focus.
- Skip ahead to the conclusion for a broad look back at the material. The author also may provide important limitations to the research in this section.
- Take a look at the citations/bibliography section.
- Are the sources cited relevant and timely for this field?
- Do a spot check by locating a couple of the sources provided by the author. Are they accurate and relevant to the material?
For more information and practice evaluating resources, check out this tutorial on Evaluating Information.
