Thomas Elyot 'The Image of Governance' and Other Dialogues of Counsel (1533-1541)

<p>Thomas Elyot's <em>Image of Governance</em> is an English-language version of the matter of Thomas More's <em>Utopia</em>: a tract <em>de optimo statu reipublicae</em> likewise replete with imagined 'dialogues of counsel'; but in an anti-utopian monarchist perspective calculated to appeal to Henry VIII. Moreover <em>Image of Governance</em> is not imaginary but historical translated from the late antique Latin <em>Historia augusta</em>.</p><p>The present book provides critical editions of Elyot's political writings other than the <em>Governour</em> all of which are or incorporate extensive translations of ancient Greek and Latin writings like the <em>Image of Governance</em>. In these related 'Dialogues of Counsel' Elyot takes ancient historical cases — Plato's sale into slavery by Dionysius the tyrant of Syracuse for example; or the life of the West Asian emperor Zenobia a woman under patriarchy; or the advice of the Attic orator Isocrates to King Nicocles of Salamis; or the failed but ambitious late Roman imperiate of Alexander Severus; et cetera — and dramatises them by means of the sort of Lucianic dialogue that Erasmus had used for the <em>Praise of Folly</em> (More too) except in the vernacular for a relatively broader more popular English audience.</p>