Popular Sovereignty as Feminine Virtue in the Machiavellian Republic: The Case of Lucrezia in La Mandragola

• In Event: Modern Political Theory

Abstract

La Mandragola has been studied by in relation to Machiavelli’s writings on politics. Some see in La Mandragola the virtues of the private and its superiority over the public (Baumgarth 2015; Turner 2016). Others speculate on which characters embody the Machiavellian virtú (Mansfield 2000; Sumberg 1961; Tylus 2000). These studies’ limited focus on The Prince is insufficient in relating La Mandragola to Machiavelli’s overarching republican politics.
This paper argues that Lucrezia emerges as a model of popular sovereignty as she plays the humors of the monarchical and oligarchic elements against each other. Machiavelli constructs an allegory of a libidinal regime through the household of Nicia, where particular humors correspond to particular desires in a Platonic fashion (Saxenhouse 2000). Lucrezia, the seemingly powerless and gullible character, emerges victorious in a game of trickery by feigning being tricked by her male interlocutors .
Presented as “fit to rule a kingdom,” Lucrezia, just like Machiavelli in the preface, seeks “to mask [her] impotence” by relying on her epistemic superiority enabled by her sense of “touch” (P, XVIII; Mulvey 1989). By tricking both her husband and her lover, Lucrezia achieves a household that resembles a republican mixed regime, eschewing domination. The aim thereby is to understand the parallels between fortuna, femininity, and the people in Machiavellian republicanism and to understand the implications for contemporary politics, described as “audience democracy” by scholars like Nadia Urbinati and Jeffrey Green.

Author

• Utku Cansu, Princeton University