%0 Journal Article
%T Reverberations of The Prince: From ¡®heroic fury¡¯ to ¡®living philology¡¯
%A Peter D. Thomas
%J Thesis Eleven
%@ 1461-7455
%D 2018
%R 10.1177/0725513618787661
%X This article explores the ways in which Gramsci¡¯s engagement with Machiavelli and The Prince in particular result in three significant developments in the Prison Notebooks. First, I analyse how the ¡®heroic fury¡¯ of Gramsci¡¯s lifelong interest in Machiavelli¡¯s thought develops, during the composition of his carceral writings, into a novel approach to the reading of The Prince, giving rise to the famous notion of the ¡®modern Prince¡¯. Second, I argue that the modern Prince should not be regarded merely as a distinctive (individual or collective) figure, but rather should be understood as a dramatic development that unfolds throughout ¡®the discourse itself¡¯ of the Prison Notebooks, particularly in the crucial phase of reorganisation in the ¡®special notebooks¡¯ composed from 1932 onwards. Third and finally, I suggest that the combination of the two preceding themes is decisive for understanding the modern Prince as a distinctive form of political organisation. Rather than equated with a generic conception of the ¡®(communist) political party¡¯, this notion was developed as a part of Gramsci¡¯s larger argument regarding the necessity for anti-Fascist political forces in Italy in the early 1930s to grow into an antagonistic collective body guided by principles of ¡®living philology¡¯
%K living philology
%K Machiavelli
%K modern Prince
%K political organisation
%U https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0725513618787661