This handsome and weighty volume collects forty-five essays that originated in a conference held at the Université de Rennes 2 during just three days in November 2007. Given the number of papers, the average essay including bibliography and notes amounts to slightly more than ten pages, and within these limits most contributors can only provide an introduction to lesser-known works in the genre. Despite the preponderance of biographies and synopses, the result is a fascinating tapestry of humanist dialogue from 1420 to 1560, which offers what the editors call “la richesse à peu près inépuisable du sujet” (11). There are surprisingly few overlaps. Only two authors are the subject of three essays: dialogic aspects of Petrarch (broadly defined) are examined by Enrico Fenzi (conversational “modalities” in the poems and De Remediis), Francesco Tateo (“la bataille entre pensées contraires”), and Cristina Noacco (a comparison with Charles d’Orléans), while Paolo Pino’s Dialogo di pittura (1548) is discussed by Isabelle Bouvrande (with attention to Alberti’s influence), Pascale Dubus (on the pleasureful in painting), and Vincenzo Caputo (including Vasari, Dolce, and Gilio).

The essays are grouped under four categories that may be summarized as follows: theories and forms, variations and diffusion, social issues, and the arts and sciences in dialogue. The works treated originated in diverse countries and cultures and, apart from the universality established by the frequent use of Latin, may to some degree be assigned to national milieus: about twenty-five in French, sixteen in Italian, and eleven in Iberian languages (eight Spanish, two Portuguese, and one Catalan). It is an invidious task to single out particular essays, but a number seem noteworthy for their content, especially in presenting lesser-known dialogues. Ana Vian Herrera’s “Les défenseurs espagnols du vulgaire en dialogue” surveys Hispanic authors, including Pedro de Quiroga, whose 1569 Coloquios de la verdad is written in Castilian, Latin, and Quechua. With the exception of Petrarch, the earliest dialogues treated are Alain Chartier’s French Quadriloge invectif (1422) and Latin Dialogus Familiaris (1427), discussed by Emmanuel Buron. Iberian dialogue is represented by Cristòfol Despuig’s 1557 Catalan Col·loquis, described by Josep Solervicens, and João de Barros’s 1532 Portuguese Ropicapnefma (1532), treated by Maria Teresa Nascimento. David González Ramírez’s “Nouvelle et colloque au cours du xviie siècle en Espagne: Le roman picaresque et les genres connexes” examines narrative dialogue in the 1613 Coloquio de los perros of Cervantes and in the 1624 Alonso mozo de muchos amos of Jerónimo Alcalá Yánez. (Oddly, the essay by Pouneh Mochiri on Francisco de Holanda’s 1547 Portuguese Da Pintura Antiga cites the work only in a French translation, not in the original.)

Italian works covered include Stefano Prandi’s “Tradition humaniste et polémiques religiueuses: Le modèle lucianesque (1517–46),” which includes Roman pasquinades (385–96); and Rinaldo Rinaldi’s essay on Folengo’s 1526 Caos del Triperuno, a trilingual work featuring Latin, Italian, and macaronic Latin. An interesting contribution is Nicola Catelli’s “Li due Petrarchisti: Un cas d’évolution de la forme dialogue entre le XVIe et le XVIIe siècle.” The title refers to a volume published in Venice in 1623 that combines two dialogues, one by Niccolò France (1539) set in Vaucluse, and one attributed to Ercole Giovaninni set in Arquà (anticipating the pilgrimages of admirers like Foscolo). For all their innovation, sixteenth-century dialogues could also revive long-standing debates such as medicine versus law, as Milagro Laín Martínez and Doris Ruíz Otín demonstrate using Pedro de Mercado’s 1558 Diálogos de Filosofia natural y moral. The reader may note the absence of dialogues by English and German authors, although Véronique Montagne examines the genre as analyzed in Johannes Sturm’s 1548 Partitiones Dialecticae. The omnipresent Erasmus is the subject of essays by Étienne Wolff (255–60) and the late Jean-Claude Margolin.

The essays are preceded by the editors’ introduction and a general bibliography, and followed by an appendix outlining the goals and organization of the electronic bibliography of the Spanish dialogue (Dyalogica BDDH), as well as an “Index Nominum.”