Output details

Pocket Oracle and Art of Prudence : Balthasar Gracian

Based on extensive primary research into the discourses on which Gracián draws (Thomism, the Catholic anti-Machiavellian tradition, Classical and early modern moral philosophy), this is the first translation to aim at rigorous conceptual accuracy as a prerequisite to comprehension of a notoriously obscure text whose conceptual, lexical and grammatical difficulties have longed posed numerous interpretative problems for critics.

Lack of familiarity with the philosophical and religious discourses within which Gracián operates has led critics and translators to misunderstand what the text means and thus to misrepresent fundamentally its moral ethos and objectives. Knowledge of these contexts radically impacts on this translation as interpretation, enabling key terms to be understood and translated for the first time according to seventeenth-century usage. By aiming at faithful adherence to the semantic range of such discourses, the translation correctly conveys the nuanced moral ambiguity of the original and, by so doing, offers a new understanding of the work.

What has been especially absent in existing translations, critical editions and criticism is familiarity with its Jesuit context. As a result of research into early modern Jesuit writings and hagiography in Latin, Spanish, and Italian, a key element of the translation’s originality is its identification of the aphorisms’ Jesuit substrata and its assessment of how this impacts on the problematic reception and moral interpretation of the work.

The translation, introduction and notes - which identify, frequently for the first time, both the sources of Classical and contemporary allusions and the Jesuit origins and parallels of many of the most shocking aphorisms - constitute a fundamental critical reappraisal of Gracián’s influential work. Together, they position Gracián as a distinctively Jesuit moralist and pinpoint the ways he differs sharply from contemporaries in treating the most important term in early modern moral and political discourse, prudence.