| Considered the quintessential philosophical genre since Ancient Greece, the dialogue experienced a resurgence during the Renaissance and was used to treat topics ranging from music and dance to politics and religion. This dissertation challenges prevailing scholarly explanations for the popularity of the dialogue, which often attribute its widespread use to the influence of humanistic traditions and an increasing openness to the "Other." These reasons fail to encompass "high stakes" dialogues on particularly controversial issues. Through a textual and rhetorical analysis of four dialogues from the French Wars of Religion, this dissertation examines the decision to present in dialogic form the doctrinal disputes between Catholics and Protestants. These dialogues---all by little-known authors and neglected by modern scholars---have been chosen for their primarily doctrinal content and for their representation of a conversation between a Protestant and a Catholic. Other than this common decision to give the religious opponent a voice, the dialogues present divergent persuasive strategies, particularly by situating the reader at different distances from the conversation. Chapters 1 and 3 treat dialogues written by Catholics: the Discours Familier (1566) by Pierre Regis and Discours Veritable (1604), attributed to Joachim Le Miere (Le Myere). Chapters 2 and 4 study Protestant dialogues: Le Pacifique (1590) by Theophile Friderick (pseudonym) and the Dialogues Rustiques (1608) by Jean de Moncy. This dissertation considers each work in chronological order, which coincides with a movement from a scholarly use of the dialogue towards a theatrical model. While demonstrating the range of possibility within the dialogic genre, the dialogues have in common the importance accorded to the rhetorical principles of ethos and pathos, relative to logos. |
