The dialogue in Italian in the sixteenth century

In this study I propose to make what will merely be a beginning in the investigation of a subject of considerable importance in the history of Renaissance literature in Italy. By "the Dialogue" I mean that peculiar literary form which consists in the setting down of a real or imaginary conversation between two or more persons - exclusive of dramatic dialogue deliberately written for acting purposes. This form certainly has always enjoyed some popularity among the world's writers, from earliest literature down to such modern authors as Walter Savage Landor with his Imaginary Conversations, but nowhere at any time has it flourished so vigorously and so prolifically as it did in Italy in the sixteenth century. Curiously enough, it appears to be in that century only that it was cultivated to such an extent in Italian. A number of earlier dialogues were written in Italy, but written usually in Latin. A few dialogues were written in Italian later than that century, among the most important being those of Galileo Galilei and those of Leopardi (the Operette Morali). But within the limits of the sixteenth century were published dialogues by many of the most noted writers of the times, as well as many more by authors who nowadays are almost or entirely forgotten. It is with this great spate of dialogues that I wish to deal.Besides this limitation of time, I must impose yet another limitation on my subject: I shall deal only with the dialogue in prose. This is a minor restriction, verse dialogues being rare, but one in which I am upheld by no less an authority than Tasso, who, in his study of the art of dialogue, recommends prose as the only fit medium for this form (although he himself wrote a few dialogues in verse). And if we consider that dialogue should be a reproduction of conversation, this recommendation is logical.First of all, then, I present a brief discussion of the causes and extent and variety of the prose dialogue in Italian in the sixteenth century; then a list of the writers of dialogues, their works, and, so far as possible, some indication of their significance