‘That Gentleman of Yours …’

Some Speculations of Niccolò Machiavelli on Cesare Borgia

Abstract

In this lecture, Academic Language Consultant Sophie Swerts Knudsen, will explain the importance of the political and geographical map of ‘Italy’ at the end of the 15^th century and situate the powers that ruled. She will then discuss Pope Alexander VI and his son Cesare Borgia and their dynastical ambitions to re-arrange the fragmented map of the peninsula and to create a buffer state for the Papal territories with Cesare on the throne. Finally, she will elaborate on Cesare Borgia’s historic meetings with the Florentine envoy Niccolò Machiavelli: encounters that inspired the writing of ‘the Prince’. Here, she will introduce some of the speculations of Machiavelli towards the man he considered the prototype of ‘the ruler’.

Bio

Sophie Swerts Knudsen is an Academic Language Consultant at the Center of Internationalisation and Parallel Language Use (CIP) at The University of Copenhagen in Denmark. She holds an MA in Translation Studies in English, Dutch, and Italian from the Lessius University College Antwerp, affiliated with the Catholic University, Leuven in Belgium.