Machiavel

Early Modern Italy (Cambridge, 2000) Hampton, T., Fictions of Embassy: Literature and Diplomacy in Early Modern Europe (Ithaca, ny, 2009) Mattingly, G., Renaissance Diplomacy (London, 1955) Maude-la-Clavière, M.A.R. de, La Diplomatie au temps de Machiavel (Paris, 1892–3) Queller, D. E., The Office of the Ambassador in the Middle Ages (Princeton, nj, 1967) Russel, J. G., Diplomats at Work: Three Renaissance Studies (Stroud, 1992) Thorp, M. R., and A. J. Slavin, eds, Politics, Religion and…

Machiavelli who seems to have earned every feminist invective against him. He expresses no moral outrage about the rape; and his silence, indeed, his interpretation of Lucretia’s violation in terms of political expediency, is quintessential ‘‘evil Machiavel.’’ What seems to matter to him is only how events correspond with the demands of political life. Yet is it sheer misogyny and opportunism that motivates Machiavelli’s reading of Lucretia’s rape? How does the ‘‘accident of Lucretia’’…