Hostname: page-component-cb9f654ff-p5m67 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-08-22T06:37:25.720Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Milton on Machiavelli: Representations of the State in Paradise Lost

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 November 2018

Barbara Riebling
Barbara Riebling*
Affiliation:
University of Toledo
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

In the prologue to Christopher Marlowe's The Jew of Malta, Machiavelli appears on stage to announce his arrival in England after a sojourn through the Continent:

Albeit the world thinke Machevill is dead,

Yet was his soule but flowne beyond the Alpes,

And now the Guize is dead, is come from France

To view this Land and frolicke with his friends. (Prologue, 1-4)

The impact of Machiavelli on sixteenth-century Europe was profound, and as this passage implies, his reception in England was complicated by an involved process of transmission. Reactions to his works mixed with demonic portrayals of him that had percolated through European political communities.

Information

Type
Studies
Information
Renaissance Quarterly , Volume 49 , Issue 3 , Autumn 1996 , pp. 573 - 597
Copyright
Copyright © Renaissance Society of America 1996

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.)

Article purchase

Temporarily unavailable

References

Baron, Hans. In Search of Florentine Civic Humanism: Essays on the Transition from Medieval to Modern Thought. 2 vols. Princeton, 1988.10.1515/9781400859412Google Scholar
Bennett, Joan S. Reviving Liberty: Radical Christian Humanism in Milton's Great Poems. Cambridge MA, 1989.Google Scholar
Bock, Gisela. “Civil Discord in Machiavelli's Istorie Florentine. ” In Machiavelli and Republicanism, ed. Bock, Gisela, Skinner, Quentin, and Viroli, Maurizio, 181–201. Cambridge, 1990.Google Scholar
Bushnell, Rebecca. Tragedies of Tyrants: Political Thought and Theater in the English Renaissance. Ithaca, 1990.Google Scholar
Cassirer, Ernst. The Myth of the State. New Haven, 1946.Google Scholar
Davies, Stevie. Images of Kingship in Paradise Lost: Milton's Politics and Christian Liberty. Columbia, MO, 1983.Google Scholar
Donaldson, Peter S. Machiavelli and Mystery of State. New York, 1988.Google Scholar
Empson, William. Milton's God. Norfolk, CT, 1961.Google Scholar
Fink, Zera S. The Classical Republicans: Art Essay in the Recovery of a Pattern of Thought in Seventeenth Century England. Evanston, 1945.Google Scholar
Freud, Sigmund. The Basic Writings of Sigmund Freud. Trans. Brill, A.A.. New York, 1938.Google Scholar
Garver, Eugene. Machiavelli and the History of Prudence. Madison, 1987.Google Scholar
Hill, Christopher. Milton and the English Revolution. Middlesex, 1979.Google Scholar
Kahn, Victoria. “ Virtù and the Example of Agathocles in Machiavelli's Prince . Representations 13 (1986): 63–83.10.1525/rep.1986.13.1.99p01095Google Scholar
Kahn, Victoria. “Reduction and the praise of disunion in Machiavelli's Discourses .” Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies 18 (1988): 1–19.Google Scholar
Kahn, Victoria. Machiavellian Rhetoric: From the Counter-Reformation to Milton. Princeton, 1994.10.1515/9781400821280Google Scholar
Machiavelli, Niccolò. Machiavelli's The Prince: A Bilingual Edition. Trans. Musa, Mark. New York, 1964.Google Scholar
Machiavelli, Niccolò. The Discourses. Ed. Crick, Bernard. Trans. Walker, Leslie J.. New York, 1970.Google Scholar
Marlowe, Christopher. The Complete Works of Christopher Marlowe. Ed. Bowers, Fredson. Cambridge, 1973.Google Scholar
Meinecke, Friedrich. Machiavellism: The Doctrine of Raison d'Etat and its Place in Modem History. Trans. Scott, Douglas. New York, 1965.Google Scholar
Milton, John. The Works of John Milton. New York, 1931.Google Scholar
Pitkin, Hanna Fenichel. Fortune Is a Woman: Gender and Politics in the Thought of Niccolo Machiavelli. Berkeley, 1984.Google Scholar
Pocock, J.G.A. The Machiavellian Moment: Florentine Political Thought and the Atlantic Republican Tradition. Princeton, 1975.Google Scholar
Raab, Felix. The English Face of Machiavelli: A Changing Interpretation 1500-1700. Toronto, 1964.Google Scholar
Rebhorn, Wayne A. “The Humanist Tradition and Milton's Satan: The Conservative as Revolutionary.” Studies in English Literature 13 (1973): 81–93.Google Scholar
Rebhorn, Wayne A. Foxes and Lions: Machiavelli's Confidence Men. Ithaca, 1988.Google Scholar
Radzinowicz, Mary Ann. “The Politics of Paradise Lost .” In The Politics of Discourse: The Literature and History of Seventeenth-Century England, ed. Sharpe, Kevin and Zwicker, Steven, 204-29. Berkeley, 1987.Google Scholar
Ross, M.M. Milton's Royalism: A Study of the Conflict of Symbol and Ideas in the Poems. Ithaca, 1943.Google Scholar
Sommerville, J.P. Politics and Ideology in England, 1603-1640. London, 1986.Google Scholar
Worden, Blair. “Milton's Republicanism and the Tyranny of Heaven.” In Machiavelli and Republicanism, ed. Bock, Gisela, Skirmer, Quentin, and Viroli, Maurizio, 225-45. Cambridge, 1990.Google Scholar