A Study Of Machiavelli's Rhetorical Thoughts

Machiavelli is an important humanist and politician in the Renaissance period,as well as a great rhetorician whose discourse narration and verbal behaviors cannot be separated from the support of rhetoric.Although his political thoughts are known to all in political circles,his rhetorical thoughts are rarely mentioned.There are two main reasons: on the one hand,Machiavelli never writes a treatise on rhetoric,and his ideas of rhetoric are mixed into his political and historical concepts,which is hard to detect and figure out.On the other hand,studies on Machiavelli's thoughts carried out by domestic and western scholars are often established and dominated as negative and critical,which leads to the imbalance of multi-dimensional analysis.Therefore,this thesis mainly researches on Machiavelli's rhetorical thoughts in the following three aspects:(1)the relations between Machiavelli and the tradition of classical rhetoric;(2)major elements of Machiavelli's rhetorical thoughts;(3)the influence of Machiavelli's rhetorical thoughts.This thesis first discusses the necessity and significance of the study on Machiavelli's rhetorical thoughts based on the analysis of the research status of Machiavelli's thoughts both at home and abroad through deductive analysis.Secondly,this thesis needs to be understood in the light of Machiavelli's historical era,social background,life experience,education background,political career and so on,and sorts out the formation background of Machiavelli's rhetorical thoughts from the diachronic dimension,as well as the parentage between Machiavelli and the classical rhetorical tradition.Last,this study attempts to explore Machiavelli's rhetorical thoughts from six aspects,namely,classical rhetoric,political rhetoric,binary rhetoric philosophy,feminist rhetoric,ethical rhetoric and narrative rhetoric.In addition,this thesis also provides an explanation of the connotation of his rhetorical thoughts,based on the analysis of Machiavelli's major works including The Prince,Discourses on Livy,Art of War,La Mandragola and so on.This study arrives at the conclusion that there are three factors that have influenced Machiavelli's rhetorical thoughts.First,classical rhetorical ideas andrhetorical education were widely spread and flourished in Florence during the Renaissance.Second,Machiavelli received a good education on rhetoric from his childhood to adulthood.And at that time in Italy,humanistic education had become an essential condition for the selection of officials.Third,Machiavelli's fourteen-year political career and the imprisonment life made him realize the importance of rhetoric and rhetorical compromise.Additionally,this study also finds out that Machiavelli's political rhetoric is a combination of deliberative rhetoric and argumentative rhetoric,which is political persuasion based of ethics and morality.The binary rhetorical philosophy is a manifestation of argumentation rhetoric which aims at guiding audiences to discuss from both aspects of an issue.It is through the combination of feminist rhetoric and narrative rhetoric that Machiavelli realizes the unification of his works and also achieves a delicate balance between fortuna and virtù in rhetoric persuasion.His ethical rhetoric provides a certain reference value for the study of modern and contemporary rhetoric.Machiavelli's rhetorical thoughts are an inheritance and development of classical rhetoric,which is intertwined with his political thoughts without any theoretical paradigms.To some extent,this study alleviates the imbalance in the study of Machiavelli's thoughts in China,and shifts the emphasis from political field to rhetorical area,which helps promote the innovation of perspectives on the study of Machiavelli.At the same time,it deepens the understanding of political rhetoric in contemporary western countries.