Dante Alighieri (1265-1321) has traditionally been viewed through the lens of his poetic masterpiece, the Commedia. While his so-called “minor” works, including the overtly political book four of Convivio and the treatise Monarchia, have been studied, much of this work tends to read Dante through the theologized, over-determined hermeneutic of the narrative of his poetic journey through the afterlife. Also, because of the overwhelming temptation to associate Dante’s place in intellectual history with his clerical contemporaries in Paris and Bologna, a similar trend (often combined with the first) reads Dante as merely an idiosyncratic but minor epigone of the scholastics in his non-poetic work. The latter vein of interpretation is very common and tends to generate interpretations of Dante’s political thought which see it as a predominantly abstract encounter with scholastic theology and philosophy in the context of the high medieval church-state conflicts, particularly in the contentious age of Popes Boniface VIII, Clement V, and John XXII and their bloody disputes with claimants to the Holy Roman throne and French and Aragonese monarchies over political control of northern Italian territories. While this kind of reading is not unwarranted—for Dante’s Monarchia does make strong claims in the late medieval church-state conflict and deploys a philosophical lexicon current with scholastic intellectuals of the time—many scholars have read Dante’s monarchical theory in Convivio and Monarchia exclusively as a response to and dialogue with the major scholastic and juridical writers, particularly of the “mirrors of princes genre,” on both sides of these political conflicts between Church-State claims to authority. This is not completely wrong, but in so doing many have, conversely, failed to understand that Dante is making a coherent and unique normative argument. Such readings fail to read Dante 1) as a real Florentine politician, 2) as an enthusiastic follower of Aristotelian paradigms (not merely a scholastic Aristotelian), 3) as a committed political secularist, and 4) as contextualized within the rich municipal, social, economic, and political histories of Florence and Medieval Italy. This study thus moves away from previous approaches to Dante’s political thought and does a close re-reading of Convivio and Monarchia in a properly historicized framework, inspired by the work of Ernst Curtius and modern historicist methodology, contextualizing it in 13th and 14th century history. In particular, the study departs from Dante’s denunciation of greed in his lyrics, Commedia, Convivio, and Monarchia to establish the fact —through extensive research in economic history, commercial development, economic thought, political history, social history in medieval Italy etc.— that far from being a merely abstract denunciation of mammon or usury, like that found in the Bible and other theological writings, it is a unique and acerbic response to broad changes that can only be construed, on the basis of historical scholarship, in terms of the emergence of early capitalism in Florentine society around the early to mid 13th century. Chapter 1 serves as an initial overview of the whole study, also positioning it in relation to debates within the field of Dante studies; chapter 2 examines the international and political situation of Florence and Italy during Dante’s time; chapter 3 proposes a new historiography of this history and examines it as the development of “political economy”; chapter 4 explores the emergence of capitalism in Florence and Italy in the 13th and 14th centuries (also motioning to debates about the nature and definition of “political economy” and “capitalism”); finally, chapter 5 examines Aristotle’s critique of political economy in the Ethics and Politics, then pivots to Dante’s deployment of such Aristotelian paradigms in Convivio and Monarchia to both denounce the injustices generated by the intertwinement of politics and acquisitive monetary wealth-getting and to articulate a monarchical political model for stopping the deleterious effects of greed.

La monarchia britannica – soprattutto quando viene considerata nella sua evo-luzione istituzionale contemporanea – rappresenta un oggetto di studio poco affermato sia in Italia sia, sorprendentemente, nei paesi di stampo anglosassone;il presente studio si pone l'obiettivo di analizzare la figura di Elizabeth II dal punto di vista dello svolgimento dell’attività di rappresentanza all’estero e nei paesi membri del Commonwealth durante il primo ventennio del suo lunghissimo regno. L’attività pubblica della Regina – i viaggi e le visite che compie e riceve ogni anno all’estero su suggerimento del Governo e con l’aiuto organizzativo del Foreign Office e nei paesi del Commonwealth su invito dei paesi stessi – rappresenta, infatti, una lente di ingrandimento particolarmente significativa e mai utilizzata prima per l’analisi della Monarchia. / This research project wants to give a meaningful account of the role of the Queen in the foreign policy from the beginning of Her Majesty's reign in 1952 to 1972 (date of the United Kingdom's entry in the European Community). The shape of the Monarchy has often been outlined describing Her Majesty's biographical events, but in this way a research following an institutional point of view has always been left out. Instead, this type of research could enable to understand with more clarity the real contribution of the Crown in the British constitutional system. The necessity to investigate the role of the Queen does not come only from the absence of adequate and comprehensive studies about it, but derives from the belief that Elizabeth II — despite her full respect of the constitutional practices — had effectively guided Her realms through those difficult years which have seen the dismantlement of the Empire, the birth of the New Commonwealth, the tortuous path towards the European integration and the terrible and dangerous tensions caused by the Cold War. The role of Her Majesty as Head of State and as Head of the Commonwealth, as well the tenacious practice of the three fundamental rights enunciated by Bagehot — the right to be consulted, the right to encourage, the right to warn —, make this research more than motivated. Moreover, the particular attention dedicated to the trips and the visits of the Queen shows that these moments have more than a symbolical value in the international relations. As the nature of this project is purely innovative, this research has been carried out using mainly archives sources.

Sebbene Filippo V sia uno dei monarchi antichi meglio attestati nella tradizione letteraria ed epigrafica, la complessità della sua regalità sfugge ancora alla ricerca storica moderna, che finora ha preferito concentrarsi sulla coeva espansione romana nel Mediterraneo. Dopo la vecchia monografia di Walbank (1940; 19602), la tesi costituisce dunque la prima analisi politica della basileia di Filippo V e della sua relazione con le leghe greche alla fine del III secolo a.C. La ricerca collega all'orizzonte politico e istituzionale ellenistico i primi 12 anni di governo di Filippo V (229-217 a.C.) ripercorrendo le fasi dell’azione politica del re: una prima fase riguarda principalmente il ruolo di Filippo durante la reggenza e il regno di Antigono Dosone; una seconda fase esplora tra il 222 e il 220 l'inizio della guerra con gli Etoli; una terza sezione è dedicata all'apertura di un fronte navale nel 219 e al successo della campagna etolica. La quarta parte indaga sull'impegno del 218 in Peloponneso di Filippo, mentre l'ultima sezione approfondisce l’azione diplomatica e militare di Filippo nel 217 e gli accordi di pace a Naupatto. Anche grazie alla buona documentazione epigrafica e letteraria, Filippo V è un paradigma unico per ridefinire il significato della regalità ellenistica. Considerando i suoi legami dinastici, la politica giudiziaria, le innovazioni militari, le relazioni diplomatiche e le riforme amministrative prima dell'intervento romano in Oriente, la ricerca tenta di fornire una prima descrizione e un'analisi della monarchia macedone matura e della sua relazione con il mondo greco; cerca inoltre di stabilire le caratteristiche della regalità ellenistica macedone nel momento dell’incontro con la potenza romana, nel tentativo di distinguere le sue peculiarità nel III secolo rispetto a quelle dell'età di Alessandro, a prescindere dalle deformazioni della propaganda di parte romana. / Although Philip V is one of the best epigraphically and literarily attested ancient monarchs, the structure, performance, and the rationale of his kingship still elude modern scholarship, which has hitherto preferred to focus on the coeval Roman expansion in the Mediterranean. The following is the first political analysis of the ancient Macedonian basileia and its relation with the Greek Leagues at the end of the 3rd century BC. The research connects the first 12 years of rule of Philip V (229-217 BC.) to the Hellenistic political and institutional horizon, and distinguishes five chronological stages of Philip’s reign according to the political agency of the king: an early stage between Demetrios II’s death in 229 and 222, mainly concerned with Philip’s role during Antigonos Doson’s rule and the ascension to the throne; a second phase between 222 and 220 exploring the beginning of the war with the Aitolians; a third section devoted to the opening of a naval front in 219 and the successful Aitolian campaign. Part four investigates Philip’s 218 Peloponnesian engagement, while the last section expands on Philip’s 217 diplomatic and military agency and the peace agreements in Naupactos. Considering his dynastic ties, court politics, military innovations, diplomatic relations and administrative reforms before the Roman intervention in the East, the work attempts to provide a source-based first description and analysis of the mature Macedonian monarchy and its relation with the Greek world. It tries to establish the features of the Mediterranean kingship encountered by the Roman expansion, in the attempt to distinguish those attested in 3rd century Macedonia from those inferred from Alexander’s age evidence, and from the Roman biased propaganda.

As the main research interest of this study one is able to highlight the issue of early- modern political thought, whose patterns have been analysed as protomodern grounds within the formative process of national identity. The thesis is based on the assumption that the political discourse of Polish aristocracy can be read as a specific part of European republicanism. Republican attributes are thus supposed to have stood for an essential core of Polish political culture at that time; core that was widely accepted by different political writers irrespective of their ideological distinctions. Hence, the study aims to prove that one is able to find the grounds of Polish "national" self-identification neither in ethnical nor in strict class traits, because concerning the question of identity, there was a crucial concept of a republic, closely linked to the peculiar values of liberty, equality and common good, which played a decisive role. In this regard, the thesis contradicts the traditional categories of Sarmatism or Sonderweg and instead of them, it introduces the concept of republican triangle as the hypothesis that is able to identify interdependence between political thought of that time and the image of Polish noble identity. Regarding methodological approaches, the study is based on the...