Welcome to the Colette Podcast. My name is Claire Lehman and I am editor and chief of Colette.

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Welcome to the Colette Podcast.

I'm Jonathan Kay.

When we think of the Italian Renaissance,

our minds often go to well-worn high school

generalizations about the great leaps in art and culture

that emerged during the 15th and 16th centuries.

But in a new book, Virtue Politics, Soulcraft and State Craft in Renaissance Italy, Harvard Professor James

Hankins reassesses some of our core assumptions about this historical period.

Professor Hankins argues that many great Renaissance thinkers were as much concerned with shaping the character of citizens as with reforming great cultural and political institutions.

He also challenges the link between the Renaissance and Republicanism and urges readers to stop

imagining Machiavelli's principles of statecraft as being completely

exemplary of Renaissance thought. Professor Hankins focuses closely on

earlier writers such as Petriarch, Boquacheo, and Bruni, whose work predated the military catastrophes that inspired Machiavelli's Grim Rail Politique, and he shows how their quote, virtue politics shaped our study of the humanities to this day.

This month, Professor Hankin spoke on the phone to Colette contributor Alexandra Hudson, an Indianapolis-based author who has explored the way that

Renaissance ideas can help lead the way to modern civic renewal.

Here are excerpts from their conversation. I think it's important to get some definitions in order.

...