Présentation de l'éditeur
Why devote a Companion to the "mirrors for princes", whose very existence is debated? These texts offer key insights into political thoughts of the past. Their ambiguous, problematic status further enhances their interest. And although recent research has fundamentally challenged established views of these texts, until now there has been no critical introduction to the genre.
This volume therefore fills this important gap, while promoting a global historical perspective of different “mirrors for princes” traditions from antiquity to humanism, via Byzantium, Persia, Islam, and the medieval West. This Companion also proposes new avenues of reflection on the anchoring of these texts in their historical realities.
Contributors are Makram Abbès, Denise Aigle, Olivier Biaggini, Hugo Bizzarri, Charles F. Briggs, Sylvène Edouard, Jean-Philippe Genet, John R. Lenz, Louise Marlow, Cary J. Nederman, Corinne Peneau, Stéphane Péquignot, Noëlle-Laetitia Perret, Günter Prinzing, Volker Reinhardt, Hans-Joachim Schmidt, Tom Stevenson, Karl Ubl, and Steven J. Williams.
Sommaire
Introduction
Authors: Stéphane Péquignot and Noëlle-Laetitia Perret
Part 1 Mapping the Mirrors for Princes’ Traditions
Chapter 1 Ideal Models and Anti-Models of Kingship in Ancient Greek Literature: Mirror of Princes from Homer to Marcus Aurelius
Author: John R. Lenz
Chapter 2 Greek and Roman Writers on the Virtues of Good Rulers: Praise, Instruction, and Constraint
Author: Tom Stevenson
Chapter 3 Carolingian Mirrors for Princes: Texts, Contents, Impact
Author: Karl Ubl
Chapter 4 Byzantine Mirrors for Princes: An Overview
Author: Günter Prinzing
Chapter 5 The Conception of Power in Islam: Persian Mirrors of Princes and Sunni Theories (11th–14th Centuries)
Author: Denise Aigle
Chapter 6 Western Medieval Specula, c. 1150–c. 1450
Authors: Charles F. Briggs and Cary J. Nederman
Chapter 7 Refutation, Parody, Annihilation: The End of the Mirror for Princes in Machiavelli, Vettori and Guicciardini
Author: Volker Reinhardt
Chapter 8 Specula Principum and the Wise Governor in the Renaissance
Author: Sylvène Édouard
Part 2 Thoughts in Motion: The Circulation and the Uses of the Mirrors for Princes
Chapter 9 The Influence of Aristotle’s Thought on Arab Political-Philosophical Ideas
Author: Makram Abbès
Chapter 10 The Arabic Mirrors for Princes as Witnesses to the Evolution of Political Thought
Author: Makram Abbès
Chapter 11 Royal Power and Its Regulations: Narratives of Hārūn al-Rashīd in Three Mirrors for Princes
Author: Louise Marlow
Chapter 12 The Pseudo-Aristotelian Secret of Secrets as a Mirror of Princes: A Cautionary Tale
Author: Steven J. Williams
Chapter 13 The Castilian Versions of the Pseudo-Aristotle’s Secretum secretorum and French Versions of Giles of Rome’s De regimine principum (13th–16th centuries): A Comparative Perspective
Authors: Hugo O. Bizzarri and Noëlle-Laetitia Perret
Chapter 14 The Relation between Wisdom Literature, Law, and the Mirrors of Princes: Castile and Sweden
Authors: Olivier Biaggini and Corinne Péneau
Chapter 15 The Use of Mirrors of Princes
Author: Hans-Joachim Schmidt
Conclusion: Mirrors for Princes and the Development of Reflections on the State
Author: Jean-Philippe Genet
