Rebhorn, Wayne A.
Professor

Education: Ph.D. Yale 1968
Office Location: PAR 328
Office Hours: On leave
Phone: (512) 471-8759
warebhorn@mail.utexas.edu

Recent Publications:
Sir Thomas More, Utopia (trans. Ralph Robinson) and William Roper, The Life of Sir Thomas More. Barnes and Noble Classics, 2005.

This book contains Ralph Robinson's Renaissance translation of More's famous work as well as the biography of More written by his son-in-law. Both works have been edited and have been fully annotated to provide linguistic and historical information essential for understanding them. They are preceded by a lengthy introduction which situates More in the double contexts of the Renaissance and the Reformation and which offers an original interpretation of Utopia.

Niccolò Machiavelli, The Prince and Other Writings. Barnes and Noble Classics, 2003.

This book provides a fresh, new translation of Machiavelli's classic political treatise, together with important excerpts from the Discourses and his biography of the Lucchese condottiere and model prince Castruccio Castracani. The translations have been heavily annotated to supply crucial information about the historical and political sources of Machiavelli's thought, and they are introduced by a wide-ranging essay that offers a compelling interpretation of Machiavelli's life and works.

Renaissance Debates on Rhetoric. Cornell University Press, 2000.

A wide-ranging collection of crucial primary texts dealing with rhetoric in the Renaissance, Renaissance Debates includes edited and translated texts written by famous authors such as Petrarch and Erasmus, Montaigne and Bacon, as well as less famous ones such as Rudolph Agricola and Nicholas Caussin. Carefully edited and annotated, they provide an overview of a discipline that was central to the intellectual and social history of the period and of Western culture more generally.

The Emperor of Men's Minds: Literature and the Renaissance Discourse of Rhetoric. Cornell University Press, 1995.

In a book that changes the way we read Renaissance rhetoric, 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, he 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.

Foxes and Lions: Machiavelli's Confidence Men. Cornell University Press, 1988.

Foxes and Lions connects Machiavelli's literary works with his political and historical writings by focusing on his obsession with the figure of the confidence man. In the comic swindlers of his play La Mandragola, the deceitful princes and condottieri of his political treatises, and Machiavelli's image of himself as revealed in his formal writings and personal letters, he fashions a hero-redeemer, both lion and fox, who is able to function effectively in a grim world of Renaissance political and personal instability.

Courtly Performances: Masking and Festivity in Castiglione's Book of the Courtier. Wayne State University Press, 1978.

Castiglione holds continuing interest for scholars of English and Comparative Literature because of the richness and integrity of his images of ideal courtiership. Central to Castiglione's social idealism is the concept of masking in several of its senses. His individuals are actors who take on the masks of a series of social roles, but also masquers in a continuously festive communal world in which imperfect human beings come together to become their most ideal social selves.

Awards and Honors:
The Dean's Research Excellence Award, 2000
Fellowship from the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation, 1992-1993
The Howard R. Marraro Prize of the Modern Language Association for Foxes and Lions: Machiavelli's Confidence Men, 1990
Fellowship from the American Council of Learned Societies, 1972-1973