The Renaissance Dialogue: Literary Dialogue in its Social and Political Contexts, Castiglione to Galileo

by Virginia Cox

• ISBN13: 9780521069663
• ISBN10: 0521069661
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2008-07-31
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

This is a full-length study of the use of the dialogue form in Italy from the early sixteenth century until Galileo. Drawing on a wide range of sources, it examines the characteristics which determined the genre's unrivalled popularity in the period as a vehicle for polemic, debate, technical exposition and comic drama. More than simply an account of the development of an individual literary genre, however, the book is a contribution to the broader social and cultural history of the period. As representations of conversation, miniature dramas of persuasion, the dialogues of the Italian Renaissance constitute an extraordinarily rich - and largely untapped - source of information about the ideals and practice of communication in the early modern age.

Table of Contents

Problems of method

History and invention in the dialogue

The uses of the dialogue in sixteenth-century Italy: celebration and control

The use of dialogue in sixteenth-century Italy: commerce and courtesy

Castiglione's Cortegiano: the dialogue as a drama of doubt<$$$>

The changing form of the Italian renaissance dialogue

The theory and practice of the dialogue in counter-Reformation Italy

From the 'girevole strada' to the straight and narrow path

From the open dialogue to the closed book

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