Violence and Revenge in Fifteenth-century Political Literature

This article investigates how the issue of violence is treated in Italian fifteenth-century political literature, with specific attention to a particular strand of texts that deal with the topic of political plot. These works belong to different literary genres and offer significant case studies that allow us to explore the multiple functions of the idea of violence in literature and politics in the Quattrocento. Violence emerges a crucial factor and plays a pivotal role as a thematic, stylistic and ideological element in these works. In particular, the ideological overtones that this multifaceted component acquires, as both a structural and stylistic element, contribute to revealing the common political ground on which all these pieces of literature lay.