The Career of Cesare Borgia in the Prince

The prompts are listed below. They will be reviewed in your next recitation section. The central question within each question is in boldface. Be sure that you understand what you are asked to do, and ask us to clarify matters if you don’t. The final paper should be in a standard format: 12- point Times Roman, regular margins, page numbers in the upper right-hand corner. It should be proof-read carefully to avoid typos, spelling errors, or faulty grammar, as such lapses are likely to put the reader in a foul mood. You will need to choose your examples appropriately, quoting from and analyzing the text where necessary to support the point you’re making. But please keep your audience in mind: in this case, you are writing for your instructors, so you can assume that we are familiar with the works at hand. Thus there is no need for plot summary or extraneous detail. Note that “outside sources” are appropriate only for prompt number 4: otherwise, only if recommended by your recitation instructor

1. The Afro-Caribbean writer and politician Aimé Césaire (1913-2008) wrote a short play called Une Tempête (“A Tempest”) that reconceives Shakespeare’s plot from the point of view of the colonized rather than that of the colonizer. This topic asks you to consider what changes the playwright makes in order to tell the “same” story from a different vantage point, and what the effect of these changes is. Start by considering what is implied in the change of Shakespeare’s title from “The” to “A”? The English translation is available at https://www.sweetstudy.com/files/cesaireaime-atempest-pdf

2. Consider any aspect of freedom—your choice—as depicted in Thomas More’s Utopia. Critically analyze its affordances: that is, what it permits or endorses, what it intends to accomplish, and what are its limits. Who has it? On what conditions? To whom is it denied? For what reasons? Be sure to ground your argument in textual analysis.

3. Consider the career of Cesare Borgia in The Prince. Are we meant to see him as an “ideal” ruler—depending, of course, on how you define the word “ideal.” How does his career illustrate both the “virtues” (in Machiavelli’s sense) and the perils of life as a prince? If he is exemplary in some way, what are we to learn from his example? Here you should read a brief biography of Cesare, one preferable to that on Wikipedia: Namely, Google “Encyclopedia Britannica” and them search for his name. Compare that biography with his career as it is described in The Prince. What does Machiavelli highlight and what does he omit that you might consider important?

4. This is a research question that may appeal specifically (but not exclusively) to Stern students. Write a brief history of the development of international banking in the Renaissance, focusing on the business practices and influence of the Medici in Florence and the Fuggers in Antwerp. For this prompt, you can assume that your readers are familiar with the cultural side of the Medici especially, as patrons of the arts. However, you should assume that the reader knows nothing about this topic in particular, so you will have to fill in more detail and document your sources. The irresistible urge always is to go to Wikipedia, but you should not cite Wikipedia as a primary source. Instead, dig down into the more authoritative sources upon which the Wikipedia entry relies. It took about thirty seconds to find this, for example: http://www.themedicifamily.com/The-Medici-Bank.html Or this: http://www.historyworld.net/wrldhis/PlainTextHistories.asp?ParagraphID=idu These are good places to start, but only that. The reader will want a clear explanation of how international banking works in these cases, how transactions are managed, how the banker makes a profit, etc.

5. The endings of comedies often offer us the beginnings of utopias. Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream concludes with a tidy community of ideal lovers. Just as More’s Utopia attempts to resolve the hardships in England during his age, Shakespeare’s ending to A Midsummer Night’s Dream offers an antidote to more tragic strains that occur earlier in the play. On the surface, you might view the dream space of the forest in the play as a utopia where characters can radically change their trajectories and begin life anew. With closer analysis, however, you may find that this assumption is not entirely true. Your task here is to consider how Shakespeare marries tragedy with comedy in the play. What tragic elements exist within comedy? How can we read the play through the lens of utopian thinking? As we have learned, utopian ideals are often undone by dystopian realities. What obstacles do the characters face over the course of one night? What promises or proposals do the characters make about how life’s problems can be solved? Which of these promises work and which fall flat or are broken by the characters—or even by Shakespeare himself? Construct an argument about the darker, tragic, dystopian scenes in A Midsummer Night’s Dream in which you analyze their purpose in one of Shakespeare’s most famous comedies.