Joining the Conversation: Dialogues by Renaissance Women (review)

Janet Smarr asserts in the first line of her book that "Dialogue is a field without edges," and goes on to demonstrate convincingly how the flexibility of the genre allowed women to find their own spaces within it. The book's focus on female-authored dialogue will obviously make it appealing to specialists in gender studies. In addition, Smarr's excellent discussions of the historical, social and literary contexts for dialogue should make this book of interest to scholars studying the genre and to Renaissance scholars simply wishing to broaden their knowledge.

The comprehensive yet concise introduction discusses different aspects of the "conversation"—types of dialogues, their aims, their participants, their audiences, their models—and shows how widely these vary. Regarding participants in dialogue, for instance, Smarr treats the issues of identity (historical or contemporary figures, fictive or real, persons or abstractions), number of voices (two or more), function of participants (oppositional, didactic, dialectical) and the relationship of speakers to each other (teacher and student, educated equals, a party of friends).

Smarr's approach is both vertical and horizontal—that is, it traces developments in dialogue through time and also through space, looking at both classical models and contemporary influences. She includes obvious classical examples such as Plato, Cicero and Lucian, and also less obvious ones such as Xenophon's Oeconomicus and Plutarch's Coniugalia praecepta, writings on family and marriage that influenced the dialogues of Alberti, Erasmus and others in the 15th and 16th centuries. Through and along with these male Renaissance writers the Oeconomicus and Coniugalia then affected the dialogues of female writers such as Catherine des Roches and Moderata Fonte. Throughout her book Smarr repeatedly shows such webs of connection, and thus her choice of title is truly apt. Women, though their dialogues were less often published and circulated than those of male contemporaries, did not remain extraneous to the conversation but became a part of it and continued it. Their works encouraged and influenced other women, as Olympia Morata's writings did for Catherine des Roches. Some female authors of dialogue, such as Marguerite de Navarre, had notable influence on writers of both sexes.

There are many ways of classifying dialogues: by theme, structure, classical model or other aspect and Smarr has chosen an unusual system. She first divides the dialogues in her study according to whether they are diphonic (two voices) or polyphonic (more than two). She then subdivides the diphonic grouping into four chapters according to affiliation with the following categories: spiritual counsel (including the dialogues of Marguerite de Navarre, Olympia Morata, Chiara Matraini); social conversation (Tullia d'Aragona, Catherine des Roches); letter writing (Laura Cereta, Isotta Nogarola, Helisenne de Crenne, Chiara Matraini); and drama (Helisenne de Crenne, Louise Labé). Polyphonic dialogues receive their own chapter (Marguerite de Navarre, Moderata Fonte).

The result of Smarr's method is that, first of all, the immense plasticity and adaptability of the dialogical genre becomes apparent. For anyone who still thinks mainly in terms of "Ciceronian" or "Platonic" dialogue, this may be eye-opening. Smarr has a talent for seeing and for seeking out connections that wouldn't be obvious to many scholars and readers. While it may seem clear, if we think about it, that there are common threads joining conversation, correspondence, written dialogue and staged dialogue, how often do we think about it? Smarr traces the connections and, while showing their pertinence to women's writing, shows their importance to dialogue writing in general.

Smarr's method of organizing her material is a weakness as well as a strength, however. Joining the Conversation is at times repetitious. The author herself notes (27) that her categories are "not neatly indistinguishable," and this is borne out in the book. The decision to separate overlapping material into different sections necessitates reiteration in each section of some of the common features. For instance, the chapter on dialogue and spiritual counsel also treats the influence on the genre of both spoken conversation and written correspondence between spiritual advisors and...