TY  - BOOK
AU  - Jurdjevic,Mark
TI  - A Great and Wretched City: Promise and Failure in Machiavelli's Florentine Political Thought 
T2  - I Tatti Studies in Italian Renaissance History
SN  - 9780674725461
AV  - DG736.3.M333 .J87 2014eb
U1  - 945/.506 23
PY  - 2014///]
CY  - Cambridge, MA : 
PB  - Harvard University Press, 
KW  - Republicanism
KW  - Italy
KW  - Florence
KW  - History
KW  - HISTORY / Europe / Italy
KW  - bisacsh
N1  - Frontmatter --; Contents --; Introduction --; 1. The Savonarolan Lens --; 2. Roman Doubts --; 3. Nobles and Noble Culture in the Florentine Histories --; 4. A New View of the People --; 5. The Albizzi Regime in the Florentine Histories --; 6. The Virtues and Vices of Medici Power in the Florentine Histories --; 7. The Failure of Florentine Institutions --; Conclusion: Machiavelli's Republican Realism --; Notes --; References --; Acknowledgments --; Index; restricted access; Issued also in print
N2  - Like many inhabitants of booming metropolises, Machiavelli alternated between love and hate for his native city. He often wrote scathing remarks about Florentine political myopia, corruption, and servitude, but also wrote about Florence with pride, patriotism, and confident hope of better times. Despite the alternating tones of sarcasm and despair he used to describe Florentine affairs, Machiavelli provided a stubbornly persistent sense that his city had all the materials and potential necessary for a wholesale, triumphant, and epochal political renewal. As he memorably put it, Florence was "truly a great and wretched city." Mark Jurdjevic focuses on the Florentine dimension of Machiavelli's political thought, revealing new aspects of his republican convictions. Through The Prince, Discourses, correspondence, and, most substantially, Florentine Histories, Jurdjevic examines Machiavelli's political career and relationships to the republic and the Medici. He shows that significant and as yet unrecognized aspects of Machiavelli's political thought were distinctly Florentine in inspiration, content, and purpose. From a new perspective and armed with new arguments, A Great and Wretched City reengages the venerable debate about Machiavelli's relationship to Renaissance republicanism. Dispelling the myth that Florentine politics offered Machiavelli only negative lessons, Jurdjevic argues that his contempt for the city's shortcomings was a direct function of his considerable estimation of its unrealized political potential
UR  - https://doi.org/10.4159/harvard.9780674368996
UR  - https://www.degruyter.com/isbn/9780674368996
UR  - https://www.degruyter.com/cover/covers/9780674368996.jpg
ER  -