The English Face Of Machiavelli: A Changing Interpretation 1500-1700
Condition: SECONDHAND
This is a secondhand book. The jacket image is a photograph of the exact copy we have in stock. This image shows the condition of this book. Further condition remarks are below.
Condition remarks:
Book: Good
Jacket: Chipped and worn with some minor damage
Pages: Good
Markings: Previous owner
In the turbulent intellectual landscape of early modern England, few foreign thinkers provoked as much controversy, fear, and fascination as Niccolò Machiavelli — and The English Face of Machiavelli: A Changing Interpretation 1500–1700 by Felix Raab chronicles precisely how that dangerous reputation was forged, contested, and transformed over two centuries. Raab meticulously traces the shifting reception of Machiavellian thought among English politicians, playwrights, theologians, and philosophers, revealing how a Florentine diplomat's cold-eyed realism became a mirror in which Tudor and Stuart England saw its own anxieties about power, religion, and statecraft reflected back with startling clarity. With a foreword by the eminent historian Hugh Trevor-Roper lending further scholarly weight, this work stands as a landmark contribution to the history of political ideas, situated within the prestigious Studies in Political History series. Raab's prose is rigorous yet compelling, weaving together textual analysis and historical context to argue that Machiavelli in England was never a fixed doctrine but a perpetually evolving cultural symbol, weaponised and rehabilitated by successive generations. For anyone seeking to understand how Renaissance political thought permeated — and ultimately shaped — the English political imagination, this book poses a question that lingers long after the final page: what does a society reveal about itself in the enemies it chooses to fear?
Author: Felix Raab
Format: Hardback
Published: 1964, Routledge & Kegan Paul / University of Toronto Press
Genre: History
Condition remarks:
Book: Good
Jacket: Chipped and worn with some minor damage
Pages: Good
Markings: Previous owner
In the turbulent intellectual landscape of early modern England, few foreign thinkers provoked as much controversy, fear, and fascination as Niccolò Machiavelli — and The English Face of Machiavelli: A Changing Interpretation 1500–1700 by Felix Raab chronicles precisely how that dangerous reputation was forged, contested, and transformed over two centuries. Raab meticulously traces the shifting reception of Machiavellian thought among English politicians, playwrights, theologians, and philosophers, revealing how a Florentine diplomat's cold-eyed realism became a mirror in which Tudor and Stuart England saw its own anxieties about power, religion, and statecraft reflected back with startling clarity. With a foreword by the eminent historian Hugh Trevor-Roper lending further scholarly weight, this work stands as a landmark contribution to the history of political ideas, situated within the prestigious Studies in Political History series. Raab's prose is rigorous yet compelling, weaving together textual analysis and historical context to argue that Machiavelli in England was never a fixed doctrine but a perpetually evolving cultural symbol, weaponised and rehabilitated by successive generations. For anyone seeking to understand how Renaissance political thought permeated — and ultimately shaped — the English political imagination, this book poses a question that lingers long after the final page: what does a society reveal about itself in the enemies it chooses to fear?