Special interests: classical rhetoric in the Renaissance the political theories of Machiavelli, Hobbes and others.ġ. European intellectual history of the early-modern period. Political-theoretical interests: the concept of representation theories of political liberty the character of the State.

Philosophical interests: speech-act theory the nature of interpretation and historical explanation.

My best-known work, The Foundations of Modern Political Thought, attempts to span the whole early-modern period. I have also published three books on the philosophy of Thomas Hobbes. I have written on the relations between rhetoric and philosophy, including a book on Shakespeare’s use of classical rhetoric, and on debates about political liberty in the English revolution. The other main focus of my research is on seventeenth century England. I have published books on Machiavelli, on early Renaissance political painting, on ideals of civic virtue, and I have edited Machiavelli’s The Prince. My historical research centres on early-modern Europe, and one of my principal interests lies in the Italian Renaissance. I have written extensively on questions about historical method and historical explanation, and many of these essays have been collected in the volume edited by James Tully, Meaning and Context: Quentin Skinner and his Critics (1988) and in my book Regarding Method (2001).

Quentin skinner machiavelli