Joining the Conversation: Dialogues by Renaissance Women (review)

In Joining the Conversation, Janet Levarie Smarr combines depth of learning and a comparatist perspective on dialogues written by Italian and French Renaissance women in order to ask questions like: Why might women have chosen the dialogue as a genre? What techniques did they adopt? How might we, as readers, enter into a conversation with these works that would illuminate our study of literary production by both men and women?

Joining the Conversation begins with an introduction (chapter 1) in which Smarr defines her field of exploration, reviews the classical models for Renaissance dialogue, indicates other sixteenth-century male-authored dialogues (by Erasmus, Castiglione, Bembo, Firenzuola, Dolce, and Speroni, among others) that would have served as points of reference for the women authors she proposes to study, and situates her own work in the context of a scholarly debate about dialogue that has taken place over the last century or so.

Smarr invites us to think about the dialogue in relation to other genres. Thus, chapter 2, "Dialogue and Spiritual Counsel: Marguerite de Navarre, Olympia Morata, Chiara Matraini," reflects on how authors explore one of the main themes of dialogue writing—how to live the good life—and the ways in which they articulate the relationship between earthly and spiritual concerns. Chapter 3, "Dialogue and Social Conversation: Tullia d'Aragona, Catherine des Roches," focuses on dialogues in which women advocate for their own right to learn and speak. Chapter 4, "Dialogue and Letter Writing: Laura Cereta, Isota Nogarola, Helisenne de Crenne, Chiara Matraini," focuses on the very special ways in which women, who sought connection, explored the relation between dialogue and letter correspondence, thus distancing themselves from men, who preferred face-to-face challenges. Chapter 5, "Dialogue and Drama: Helisenne de Crenne, Louise Labé, Catherine des Roches, Marie Le Gendre," argues that in France, there developed a female dialogue tradition that distinguishes itself both from the Italian female dialogue and from the male-authored dialogue; French women writers, according to Smarr, were particularly interconnected as a group and they also developed the theatrical possibilities of the dialogue genre. Chapter 6 ("Many Voices") turns to fully polyphonic dialogues, Marguerite de Navarre's Heptameron and Moderata Fonte's Il merito delle donne [The Merit of Women]. Chapter 7, "Cross-Threads," reflects more broadly on the questions that emerge from earlier chapters.

Following the final chapter, there is a helpful list of "Renaissance Dialogues by Women Mentioned in this Study." It might also have been useful to provide a list of dialogues by men mentioned in the book, since Joining the Conversation, despite its subtitle, is not limited to discussion of dialogues authored by women. The Introduction contains (as I noted above) a review of numerous male-authored texts; chapter 2 contains a fascinating discussion of Juan de Valdés's Alfabeto cristiano (1536) and of Bernardino Ochino's dialogues with Caterina Cibo, composed around 1536; and chapter 3 looks also at Aonio Paleario's Dell'economia o vero del governo della casa (ca. 1530) and Sperone Speroni's Dialogo di amore (1542).

Joining the Conversation does require a reader with some patience. The main arguments of the chapters are often preceded by introductory reflections on traditions and history that, while interesting and relevant, also delay the moment in which the reader grasps the main points. Some of the tight focus that one sees in an essay like Smarr's "A Female Tradition? Women's Dialogue Writing in Sixteenth-Century France" (published in Strong Voices, Weak History: Early Women Writers and Canons in England, France, and Italy, eds. Pamela Joseph Benson and Victoria Kirkham, [U of Michigan P, 2005]) is lost when this earlier piece is revised for inclusion in chapter 5 on "Dialogue and Drama." At times, there is not quite enough information given about authors at their first mention. (I suspect also that the citation style of the University of Michigan Press does not help Smarr here, since that citation...