Joining the Conversation

Know about the book -

Joining the Conversation is written by Janet Levarie Smarr and published by University of Michigan Press. It's available with International Standard Book Number or ISBN identification 0472025686 (ISBN 10) and 9780472025688 (ISBN 13).

Avoiding the male-authored model of competing orations, French and Italian women of the Renaissance framed their dialogues as informal conversations, as letters with friends that in turn became epistles to a wider audience, and even sometimes as dramas. No other study to date has provided thorough, comparative view of these works across French, Italian, and Latin. Smarr's comprehensive treatment relates these writings to classical, medieval, and Renaissance forms of dialogue, and to other genres including drama, lyric exchange, and humanist invective -- as well as to the real conversations in women's lives -- in order to show how women adapted existing models to their own needs and purposes. Janet Levarie Smarr is Professor of Theatre and Italian Studies at the University of California, San Diego.