Documents found
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3602.More information
This article addresses Niccolò Machiavelli’s role in a five-century-long controversy surrounding the execution of the Florentine captain-general Paolo Vitelli in October 1499. The official letters and dispatches Machiavelli wrote shortly before and after the event portrayed Vitelli as a traitor, thus defending the Signoria’s decision to execute the captain. In chapter 12 of The Prince, however, Machiavelli changes his tone, implying that it was not the alleged treason but the captain’s fame and Florentine insecurity that lead to his death. Given that many contemporaries praised Vitelli and seriously doubted his guilt, Machiavelli’s ambivalent positioning requires explanation. By way of the first sustained analysis of the Vitelli affair, this article will shed new light on Machiavelli’s early involvement in Florence’s political machinations. It will show how Machiavelli, as a loyal servant to his beloved Republic, coordinated, defended, and justified in his writings the course of action against Vitelli.
Keywords: Machiavelli, Machiavel, Paolo Vitelli, Paolo Vitelli, Renaissance, Renaissance, Florence, Florence, condottieri, condottieri
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3606.More information
With the arrival of Romanticism, a new imaginary about North/South identities emerged that was to achieve rapid success and considerable validity for decades. The Mediterranean-classicist hegemony sees the cultural and political power, held by the South for many centuries, transferred to the German-Romantic world. This paper analyzes Madame de Staël’s opinions on the matter, which were favorable to the Nordic culture that established a series of simple antitheses on the two identities, thus facilitating their transformation into clichés and their rapid dissemination. They were likewise ideologically exploited by the most conservative Romanticism, a defender of literary nationalism and of a Christian and monarchical literature.
Keywords: Madame de Staël, Madame de Staël, Romantic topics, tópicos románticos, identidades Norte/Sur, North/South identities, Clasicismo, Classicism, Romanticism, Romanticismo
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3608.