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.
1. Problems of method; 2. History and invention in the dialogue; 3. The uses of the dialogue in sixteenth-century Italy: celebration and control; 4. The use of dialogue in sixteenth-century Italy: commerce and courtesy; 5. Castiglione's Cortegiano: the dialogue as a drama of doubt; 6. The changing form of the Italian renaissance dialogue; 7. The theory and practice of the dialogue in counter-Reformation Italy; 8. From the 'girevole strada' to the straight and narrow path; 9. From the open dialogue to the closed book.
