Italian Lit Proposal 2

Tony Filpi

English 630

Dr. Picicci

31 March 2010

The Death of the Prince

In the shorter version of my paper, I address the significance of Machiavelli’s works in regard to Italian views on the role of a ruler or ruling party. I specifically discuss the Lampedusa’s obligation to address Machiavelli and how his work picks apart the role of the medieval archetype through the ascension of the merchant class. Rather than viewing the state as an extension of the ruler, the merchant class viewed the state as tool for producing wealth. This, in turn, disinterested the role of Machiavelli’s prince.

To expand on this concept of eliminating the prince, I would like to bring up an earlier attempt, one that focuses on the faith as the excusatory element to the prince. For this, I feel that Manzoni’s Betrothed would present my ideas nicely. Manzoni presents a world not unlike the one inhabited by Machiavelli himself; however, in this world, the characters who most embody the ideals of Machiavelli’s prince are either removed from power or converted to working for the good of the people separate from the good of the state.

I plan to follow the characters of Don Rodrigo and The Unnamed as my principle examples. I think that presenting Manzoni’s treatment of these two characters will highlight a historical attempt to dismantle the conscienceless ruler well before Lampedusa dethrones him with the middle class republic.

Di Lampedusa, Giuseppe. The Leopard. Trans. Archibald Colquhoun. New

York: Pantheon Books, 2007. Print.

Geerken, Jonh H. Machiavelli Studies Since 1969. Journal of the History of Ideas, Vol. 37, No.

2 Apr. - Jun., 1976, pp. 351-368. Print.

Kuhns, R.F. (1969). Modernity and Death: The Leopard by Giuseppe Di Lampedusa. Contemp.

Psychoanal., 5:95-118. Print.

Paolucci, Anne. “Comprendere Manzoni.” Comparative Literature Studies, Vol. 13, No. 4 Dec.,

1976, pp. 380-383. Print.
Prezzolini, Giuseppe. Machiavelli: A Study in the Life, Work, Influence and Originality of an

Obscure Florentine Civil Servant Who Has Become Our Contemporary New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1967. Print.

Machiavelli, Niccolo. The Discourses Trans. Leslie Joseph Walker. London: Penguin, 1983.

Print.

----. The Prince Trans. W.K. Marriott. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1992. Print.