The autobiographical interlocutor on "Diálogo de las empresas" (1558) and the Courtly Individualism

Abstract

This article brings forward the analysis of some essential features of the literary genre of dialogue from a Renaissance Studies perspective. The necessary link between form and content appears not only in the inner workings of the process of the argumentation, but also in the fictionalization carried out by the writer of dialogues through the distribution of his auctoritas among two or more speakers. A distinctive feature of drama --the disappearance of the authorial voice-- is absent from the generic trajectory of dialogue, especially if we consider the relevance of the autobiographical interlocutor --with the writer’s name-- from classical Antiquity to the Renaissance. The analysis of Diálogo de las empresas (1558) by Paulo Jovio furnish a possible application of the literary model described in this article.