Evil Lords

<em>Evil Lords</em> uses the prism of bad rule or tyranny to enhance our understanding of political discourse from the ancient world to the Renaissance elucidating premodern notions of sovereignty as well as the relation between ethics and politics the individual and society power and propaganda. Eleven chapters present case studies exploring Hebrew Graeco-Roman Byzantine early high and late medieval and Renaissance conceptions and representations of bad or tyrannical government. Since bad rule is always a perversion of the norm its shifting conceptualizations shed light on historically specific assessments of what constitutes acceptable and legitimate political behavior. Meanwhile political debate also reflects specific power structures authorial intent and audience expectations. Each of the essays therefore examines bad rule and its agents within the ideological frameworks and societal patterns of the respective periods thereby painting a picture of historical and intellectual change. Despite these often profound variations however the volume also shows that it is meaningful to think of a Western tradition of tyranny in the premodern world that derived from shared roots in Classical and biblical thought and was further defined by ongoing cross-fertilization spanning two millennia. Thus <em>Evil Lords</em> offers scholars and students of Western political theory history and literature a critical framework through which to revisit the <em>longue dur�e</em> of premodern political reflection.<br>