Politique

Taking points of departure from Quentin Skinner and J. G. A. Pocock Paul Strohm deploys superior powers of textual and linguistic analysis to uncover a 'pre-Machiavellian moment': an historical phase which saw political discourse deployed with unprecedented slipperiness and subtlety; a time when it was thought possible not just to follow Fortune but to jam her turning wheel. That this should have occurred in the fifteenth century a period regarded as too dull tradition-bound or chaotic for significant discursive innovation is just one of the surprises of this remarkable book. Little-regarded writers such as Fortescue and Pecock Whethamstede and Warkworth emerge as figures of compelling interest; John Lydgate once dismissed as Chaucer's dullest successor opens paths to the Mirror for Magistrates and to the heart of Shakespearean history. This book is recommended to scholars and students of medieval and Renaissance history and literature and to all those fascinated by languages of conspiracy destiny and government. -David Wallace University of Pennsylvania