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Machiavelli's Medical Mandragola: Knowledge, Food, and Feces

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 March 2021

Susan Gaylard
Susan Gaylard*
Affiliation:
University of Washington
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Abstract

This article argues that the medical discourse of Machiavelli's “Mandragola” is profoundly important both for understanding the play and for revisiting its author's philosophical and political writings. I show that discussions in “Mandragola” of doctors, medicine, eating, and elimination ultimately break down the traditional paradigm that opposes truth, nourishment, and healing to deception, problematic food, and illness. The play's extended discourse around medicine undermines the ideal of the physician who heals the state and the pharmakon of words that heal the soul (in Plato, Livy, Saint Augustine, and Machiavelli's “Discorsi”), questioning in turn notions of knowledge and truth.

Type
Articles
Information
Renaissance Quarterly , Volume 74 , Issue 1 , Spring 2021 , pp. 59 - 93
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Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s) 2021. Published by the Renaissance Society of America

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Footnotes

A draft of this article was presented at the symposium “On Human Nature: Machiavelli's Mandrake at 500” at the University of Wisconsin–Madison in October 2018; special thanks to Kristin Phillips-Court for organizing and hosting, and to fellow participants for their feedback. Matthew Gorey offered invaluable help with classical Greek and Latin nuances. Albert Ascoli, Albert Sbragia, Amyrose McCue Gill, Lisa Regan, and Jessica Wolfe likewise provided generous feedback on earlier versions.

References

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