![]() The term virtù almost defies translation, but the range of its reference is clear enough. The chief evidence of these preoccupations is the pivotal place that Machiavelli assigns to the concept of virtù in his two most famous political works. It has long been recognized that Machiavelli was deeply preoccupied by the theme of true manliness, and by the forces that undermine the realization of what he took to be manly ideals in public life. ![]() ![]() Hanna Pitkin’s central argument in Fortune Is a Woman is that “where politics meets gender” we come upon “the troubled heart of Machiavelli’s complex thought.” Machiavelli, for her, is “both a republican and something like a protofascist” and the “focus of the ambivalence” she finds in his texts is “manhood: anxiety about being sufficiently masculine and concern over what it means to be a man.” ![]()
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