Historians of early modern Europe have long stressed how new
practices of diplomacy that emerged during the period transformed
European politics. Fictions of Embassy is the first book to examine
the cultural implications of the rise of modern diplomacy. Ranging
across two and a half centuries and half a dozen languages, Timothy
Hampton opens a new perspective on the intersection of literature
and politics at the dawn of modernity.
Hampton argues that literary texts-tragedies, epics, essays-use
scenes of diplomatic negotiation to explore the relationship
between politics and aesthetics, between the world of political
rhetoric and the dynamics of literary form. The diplomatic
encounter is a scene of cultural exchange and linguistic
negotiation. Literary depictions of diplomacy offer occasions for
reflection on the definition of genre, on the power of
representation, on the limits of rhetoric, on the nature of fiction
making itself. Conversely, discussions of diplomacy by jurists,
political philosophers, and ambassadors deploy the tools of
literary tradition to articulate new theories of political
action.
Hampton addresses these topics through a discussion of the major
diplomatic writers between 1450 and 1700-Machiavelli, Grotius,
Gentili, Guicciardini-and through detailed readings of literary
works that address the same topics-works by Shakespeare, More,
Rabelais, Montaigne, Tasso, Corneille, Racine, and Camoens. He
demonstrates that the issues raised by diplomatic theorists helped
shape the emergence of new literary forms, and that literature
provides a lens through which we can learn to read the languages of
diplomacy.
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