Vindication? Or Damnation? The Problem with Context

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It may sound a little blasphemous coming from an undergraduate studying English, but the part I love most about studying old literature isn’t actually reading the text. I often feel like I should have spent more time studying history than English because I get so much more out of piece when I understand the historical context.

The problem with that enjoyment, however, is that we as people have a very hard time getting every aspect of the context down when we start looking backwards. Despite carefully kept records and trustworthy accounts, my little problem becomes magnified when we start going back hundreds of years to the Renaissance and try to accurately guess why people wrote and did things. A good example of this to me is the controversial Renaissance writer Niccolò Machiavelli. His notorious writings have stretched down through the ages to gently mold our pop culture and character tropes with an influence akin to the much more recent H.P. Lovecraft. Because of Machiavelli, we have (for better or worse) House of Cards, Game of Thrones, and The Tudors. His works are the bread and butter of political intrigue and sound like a much more ancient, bitter, and cynical version of How to Win Friends and Influence People. 

But, the jury is still out on whether those words are serious or satire. And the debate centers around the context. 

Machiavelli wrote some fairly horrible things that are offensive to an ethical mind, but it doesn’t seem he spent his whole life living them. He was a republican during a time of monarchy who suffered publicly for his attempts to undermine the authority of the ruling Medici’s. There is a strong foundation for a belief that Machiavelli was one of the world’s most incredible satirists and critics of absolute power. We, however, can't be sure because we just don't fully know. 

You can learn more here.