Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Introduction
- READING AND INTERPRETATION: AN EMERGING DISCOURSE OF POETICS
- POETICS
- I Humanist classifications
- II The rediscovery and transmission of materials
- III Rhetorical poetics
- IV Literary forms
- 20 Italian epic theory
- 21 The lyric
- 22 Renaissance theatre and the theory of tragedy
- 23 Elizabethan theatrical genres and literary theory
- 24 Defining comedy in the seventeenth century: moral sense and theatrical sensibility
- 25 Dialogue and discussion in the Renaissance
- 26 The essay as criticism
- 27 The genres of epigram and emblem
- 28 Humour and satire in the Renaissance
- THEORIES OF PROSE FICTION
- CONTEXTS OF CRITICISM: METROPOLITAN CULTURE AND SOCIO-LITERARY ENVIRONMENTS
- VOICES OF DISSENT
- STRUCTURES OF THOUGHT
- NEOCLASSICAL ISSUES: BEAUTY, JUDGEMENT, PERSUASION, POLEMICS
- A SURVEY OF NATIONAL DEVELOPMENTS
- Bibliography
- Index
- References
25 - Dialogue and discussion in the Renaissance
from IV - Literary forms
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 March 2008
By
Edited by
Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Introduction
- READING AND INTERPRETATION: AN EMERGING DISCOURSE OF POETICS
- POETICS
- I Humanist classifications
- II The rediscovery and transmission of materials
- III Rhetorical poetics
- IV Literary forms
- 20 Italian epic theory
- 21 The lyric
- 22 Renaissance theatre and the theory of tragedy
- 23 Elizabethan theatrical genres and literary theory
- 24 Defining comedy in the seventeenth century: moral sense and theatrical sensibility
- 25 Dialogue and discussion in the Renaissance
- 26 The essay as criticism
- 27 The genres of epigram and emblem
- 28 Humour and satire in the Renaissance
- THEORIES OF PROSE FICTION
- CONTEXTS OF CRITICISM: METROPOLITAN CULTURE AND SOCIO-LITERARY ENVIRONMENTS
- VOICES OF DISSENT
- STRUCTURES OF THOUGHT
- NEOCLASSICAL ISSUES: BEAUTY, JUDGEMENT, PERSUASION, POLEMICS
- A SURVEY OF NATIONAL DEVELOPMENTS
- Bibliography
- Index
- References
Summary
The present survey traces the theory and practice of dialogue from the fifteenth to the seventeenth century, the two centuries when the form most flourished in Western European letters. During this period, the theorists of dialogue, who were often also its practitioners, conceived of their enquiry as engaging the broadest issues of language and social behaviour. The study of the genre is at once critical and historical, since writers of dialogue develop their ideas both within an intellectual exchange and within a larger social context. Recent studies have accordingly examined Renaissance dialogue either in its formal aspect (as literary structure and the articulation of argument) or in its referential aspect (as a mirror of society and a record of language).
The humanist dialogue arose in Italy around 1400, contemporary with the revival of Greek studies and with new styles in the visual arts. Generally a learned composition written in Latin, the dialogue of this initial period reflects the new philosophical freedom and eclecticism which were fostered by the rise of mercantile communes and by the weakening of papal authority through schism. Appropriately, the favoured model is the Roman orator Cicero, whose dialogues depict the leisurely philosophizing of learned optimates. While providing arguments on opposite sides of a question [in utramque partem], Cicero leaves his debates unresolved and hence implicitly open for the reader to decide.
Although no Quattrocento writers of dialogue formulate explicit theories of the genre, their choices of theme and structure imply a critical awareness of specific goals in reviving classical forms.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Cambridge History of Literary Criticism , pp. 265 - 270Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1999
References
, Andreas Alciatus. The Latin works. The emblems in translation, ed. , , and , Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1985, 2 vols.Google Scholar
The early German epigram: a study in Baroque poetry, Lexington: The University Press of Kentucky, 1971.Google Scholar
, The works of Francis Bacon, ed. , , and , London: Longmans, 1857–74, 14 vols. [Facs. reprint Stuttgart and Bad Cannstatt: Frommann-Holzboog, 1989].Google Scholar
, ‘Generic contexts of Elizabethan satire’, in Renaissance genres, ed. , Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1986.Google Scholar
, Scholars' bedlam: Menippean satire in the Renaissance, Lewisburg: Bucknell University Press, 1995.Google Scholar
, De satyrica Graecorum poesi et Romanorum satira (1605), ed. , New York: Scholars' Facsimiles and Reprints, 1973.Google Scholar
, Il libro del cortegiano, ed. , 2nd edn, Turin: Unione Tipografico-Editrice Torinese, 1964.Google Scholar
, The cornucopian text: problems of writing in the French Renaissance, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1979.Google Scholar
The resources of kind: genre-theory in the Renaissance, ed. , Berkeley, Los Angeles, and London: University of California Press, 1973.Google Scholar
, The Renaissance dialogue: literary dialogue in its social and political contexts, Castiglione to Galileo, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, ‘I cenacoli umanistici’, in Letteratura italiana. I. Il letterato e le istituzioni, ed. , Turin: Einaudi, 1982.Google Scholar
, Les dialogues de Sperone Speroni: libertés de la parole et règles de l'écriture, Marburg: Hitzeroth Verlag, 1990.Google Scholar
, Kinds of literature: an introduction to the theory of genres and modes, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1982.Google Scholar
, ‘All'uscita dalla scolastica medievale: Salutati, Bruni, e i “Dialogi ad Petrum Histrum”’, Archivio storico italiano 150 (1992).Google Scholar
‘A purchase of glory: the persona of late Elizabethan satire’, Studies in philology 72 (1975).Google Scholar
, La società del dialogo: retorica e ideologia nella letteratura conviviale del Cinquecento, Bari: Adriatica Editrice, 1989.Google Scholar
(ed.), Rome reborn: the Vatican library and Renaissance culture, Washington, DC: Library of Congress, 1993.Google Scholar
, , and (ed.), The humanism of Leonardo Bruni: selected texts, Binghamton: State University of New York Press, 1987.Google Scholar
, ‘The myth of the Platonic academy of Florence’, Renaissance quarterly 44 (1991).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
[trans.], Orlando furioso (1591), ed. , Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1972; see Harington's Preface.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, Der Dialog: Ein literar-historischer Versuch; 1895; reprint Hildesheim: Georg Ohms, 1963, 2 vols.Google Scholar
, Francis Bacon: discovery and the art of discourse, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1974.Google Scholar
, Traité du ris (1579), edited and translated as Treatise on laughter by , University, AL: Alabama University Press, 1990.Google Scholar
, Menippean satire: an annotated catalogue of texts and criticism, New York and London: Garland Press, 1980.Google Scholar
, Roman satirists in seventeenth-century England, Lincoln, NB: University of Nebraska Press, 1985.Google Scholar
, L'abeille dans l'ambre: célébration de l'épigramme, Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1989.Google Scholar
, Lucien de Samosate et le lucianisme en France au XVIe siècle: athéisme et polémique, Geneva: Droz, 1988.Google Scholar
, ‘Sur le genre du dialogue’, in L'automne de la Renaissance, ed. and , Paris: J. Vrin, 1981.Google Scholar
, et al., La satyre Ménippée: de la vertue du catholicon d'Espagne et de la tenue des estatz de Paris (1594), ed. , Paris: Garnier, 1889.Google Scholar
, Lucian and the Latins: humor and humanism in the early Renaissance, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1998.Google Scholar
, The Quattrocento dialogue: classical tradition and humanist innovation, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1980.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, The scourge of villanie; 1599; facs. reprint Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1966.Google Scholar
, Carlo Sigonio: the changing world of the late Renaissance, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988.Google Scholar
, The essays of Michel de Montaigne, trans. and ed. , London and New York: Penguin, 1991.Google Scholar
Ramus, method, and the decay of dialogue: from the art of discourse to the art of reason; 1958; reprint New York: Octagon, 1974.Google Scholar
(?), The arte of English poesie (1589), ed. and , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1936.Google Scholar
, ‘L'Accademia’, in Letteratura italiana. I. Il letterato e le istituzioni, ed. , Turin: Einaudi, 1982.Google Scholar
(ed. and trans.), Knowledge, goodness, and power: the debate over nobility among Quattrocento Italian humanists, Binghamton: State University of New York Press, 1991.Google Scholar
, A defence of poetry, in Miscellaneous prose of Sir Philip Sidney, ed. and , Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1973.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Writing the scene of speaking: theories of dialogue in the late Italian Renaissance, Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1989.Google Scholar
, Il discorso dell'arte del dialogo (1585), ed. , ‘Il discorso tassiano “Dell'arte del dialogo”’, Rassegna della litteratura italiana 75 (1971).Google Scholar
, Tasso's ‘Dialogues’: a selection, with the ‘Discourse on the art of dialogue’, ed. and , Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: University of California Press, 1982.Google Scholar
The translations of Lucian by Erasmus and St. Thomas More, Binghamton: The Vail-Ballou Press, 1940.Google Scholar
The smile of truth: the French satirical eulogy and its antecedents, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, Les sources et l'évolution des ‘Essais’ de Montaigne, Paris: Hachette, 1908, 2 vols.Google Scholar
, A discourse of English poetrie (1586), in (ed.), Elizabethan critical essays; 1904; reprint Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1971, 2 vols.Google Scholar
, English verse satire from Donne to Dryden: imitation of classical models, Heidelberg: C. Winter, 1992.Google Scholar
Lucian of Samosata in the two Hesperias: an essay in literary and cultural translation, Potomac: Scripta Humanistica, 1990.Google Scholar
- 2
- Cited by