Dialogue Poetry

As an important technique of humanist education, dialogue was a prominent literary form throughout the early modern period. Torquato Tasso, the most influential Renaissance theorist of dialogue, defines it as “imitazione del ragionamento” (the imitation of reasoning). Whether in prose or verse, dialogue is a form that represents the creation of knowledge out of multiple and competing points of view, revealing knowledge as process, rather than something that is absolute or unchanging. Early modern women writers demonstrate the versatility of the dialogue form. Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle, is the most prolific writer of verse dialogue; her poems demonstrate the value of the form for philosophical speculation and political commentary. Likewise, Anne Bradstreet used the form to engage in the most pressing debates of her day, notably in “A Dialogue between Old England and New,” which casts the conflict of the English Civil War as a conversation between mother and daughter. Finally, several poets use the conventions of pastoral dialogue to explore different types of affective bonds, including friendship in Katherine Philips’s “A Dialogue of Absence ’twixt Lucasia and Orinda” and sisterly love in “A Dialogue between Two Sisters, Bewailing Their Solitary Life” by Hester Pulter.