Una traccia machiavelliana nelle pagine del Quijote

An entertaining and incisive passage in Don Quixote brings to mind Machiavelli, prompting us to reflect on whether Cervantes had actually read The Prince or whether his ideas had come to him through some other source. In an attempt to evaluate Cervantes’ curiosity and his competence with regard to Italian writers and the Italian language, this paper analyses his familiarity with the irreverent and burlesque style in sixteenth-century Tuscan literature. While echoes of Machiavelli in Don Quixote indicate an interest in the Florentine writer, they do not necessarily imply that Cervantes was a Machiavellian. Nor, however, considering his own moral and theological beliefs, can we affirm that Cervantes was opposed to the Florentine secretary’s ideas. The difference between the two arises from the fact that Cervantes, like Montaigne, was among the founders of a new understanding of modern man, which departed from the anthropocentric certainties of the Renaissance. This new and different image of man emerges from the interiority of the private self, in stark opposition to the public figure that dominates Machiavelli’s work.