The emperor of men's minds : literature and the Renaissance discourse of rhetoric / Wayne A. Rebhorn.

Author
Rebhorn, Wayne A., 1943- [Browse]
Format
Book
Language
English
Published/​Created
Ithaca : Cornell University Press, 1995.
Description
xviii, 276 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm.

Availability

Copies in the Library

Location Call Number Status Location Service Notes
Firestone Library - Stacks PN721 .R43 1995 Browse related items Request

    Details

    Subject(s)
    Series
    Rhetoric & society [More in this series]
    Summary note
    "In a book that will change the way we read Renaissance rhetoric, Wayne A. Rebhorn shows that the issues at stake are not dialogue and debate but power and control. Looking closely at what rhetoricians themselves said about their art, Rebhorn explores the profound engagement of rhetoric with some of the major cultural concerns of the time, including political authority, social mobility, gender relations, and attitudes toward the body." "As he reads texts by Shakespeare, Jonson, Herbert, Carew, Tirso de Molina, Machiavelli, Rabelais, and Moliere, among others, Rebhorn offers a new model for the rhetorical reading of literature. Renaissance literature, he maintains, subjects rhetorical discourse to examination and evaluation and in the process exposes its many contradictions and evasions." "According to Rebhorn, rhetoricians imagine orators ambiguously, both as absolutist rulers who employ rhetoric to help maintain the status quo, and as base-born outsiders who use it to promote their own social advancement or even to resist authority. Renaissance rhetoric is equally ambiguous when it confronts issues of gender, for it identifies itself as simultaneously male and female, both "masculine" in its power and "feminine" in its procreativity and adornment. Finally, Renaissance rhetoric conveys a contradictory vision of the body, for although it is most typically aligned with the body image associated with elites, it simultaneously identities itself with the ethically suspect, grotesque body linked with the lower classes."--Jacket.
    Bibliographic references
    Includes bibliographical references (p. [259]-270) and index.
    Contents
    • Bound to rule
    • Rulers and rebels
    • Circe's garden, Mercury's rod
    • Banish the monsters.
    ISBN
    • 080142562X ((alk. paper))
    • 9780801425622 ((alk. paper))
    LCCN
    94034553
    OCLC
    31011729
    Statement on language in description
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