This collection of essays is the first to combine in depth both theory and practice and to offer close readings of French texts written in dialogue form between 1547 and 1630. It seeks to determine why dialogue was used so widely in the Renaissance, who the dominant authorities were for mid and late sixteenth-century France, how the dialogue related to other forms of discourse, what the rules of the genre were, and whether dialogue should even be regarded as a genre. Contributors: Donald Gilman; Colette H. Winn; Joan A. Buhlmann; Cathy Yandell; Ann Rosalind Jones; Paula Sommers; Eva Kushner