What is the value of conversation measured by? Are there more valuable and inferior types of conversation? What role do the contents, the people, and the circumstances play? Do times and epochs shape their own conversations? Conversation norms from handbooks as well as conversations reproduced in texts or reconstructed from texts shed light on these questions. The contributions in this volume are grouped around conceptual questions, specific contexts such as the salon and the table conversation, bring studies on individual literary texts and cover the European cultural history from Plato to the 20th century.