Studying Machiavelli

The purpose of the collection of pages I hope to build up here is, primarily, to assist Oxford history students.

The first port of call is the bibliography produced by the History Faculty. What I provide on the page entitled ‘The real Machiavelli’ is a list of on-line primary sources in Italian and English.

If you are reading this, you are the sort of person who likes to feel the rush of virtual air through your hair and surf the net. It is a mendacious world out there, and it is useful to have some guidance about what to look out for and what to avoid. You will probably have Wikipedia bookmarked on your computer, and I discuss in one of my posts here the advantages and the pitfalls of that on-line encyclopedia.

Nick Davidson and myself share a lecture series on Machiavelli in Oxford’s Michaelmas Term, given on Tuesdays at 11am. Nick will be giving the first two and the sixth lectures. I will be lecturing on the following subjects:

28 October (3rd week): Machiavelli and the humanist tradition

4 November (4th week): Machiavelli and civic humanism

11 Novemvber (5th week): Machiavelli’s use and abuse of classical sources

I plan to put my handouts on-line as these pages — but their presence here will not be a substitute for hearing the real thing!