Discourses on Livy (Oxford World's Classics) - Softcover

Machiavelli, Niccolo; Bondanella, Julia Conaway; Bondanella, Peter

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0192804731 ISBN 13: 9780192804730

Publisher: Oxford University Press, 2003

Synopsis

Discourses on Livy, written in 1531, is as essential to an understanding of Machiavelli as his famous treatise, The Prince. Equally controversial, it reveals his fundamental preference for a republican state.
Comparing the practice of the ancient Romans with that of his contemporaries provided Machiavelli with a consistent point of view in all his works. Machiavelli's close analysis of Livy's history of Rome led him to advance his most original and outspoken view of politics--the belief that a healthy political body was characterized by social friction and conflict rather than by rigid stability. His discussion of conspiracies in Discourses on Livy is one of the most sophisticated treatments of archetypal political upheaval ever written. In an age of increasing political absolutism, Machiavelli's theories became a dangerous ideology.
This new translation is richly annotated, providing the contemporary reader with sufficient historical, linguistic, and political information to understand and interpret the revolutionary affirmations Machiavelli made, based on the historical evidence he found in Livy.

About this title

About the Author:

Julia Conaway Bondanella is a Professor of Italian at Indiana University. Peter Bondanella is a Distinguished Professor of Comparative Literature and Italian at Indiana University.

Review:

`...a great author requires a careful translator; and it is befitting for Conaway Bondanella and Bondanella, in presenting a text translated from Italian to English, to assert that Machiavelli has been misunderstood because of poor translations.'
Sixteenth Century Journal

About this edition

• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Publication date: 2003
• ISBN 10: 0192804731
• ISBN 13: 9780192804730
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 448