Conclusion

I began this study with quotations from a few commentators upon answer-poetry who suggest the need for further study of the genre. Critical attention is still as sparse now as it was when the work for this thesis commenced. The discursive aspect of Renaissance verse and the importance of the art of conversation to Renaissance poetics have been largely effaced by several centuries of author-centred criticism and a significant task of reconstruction of the literary relationships between such poems is still necessary in order to reinstate the social dialogism of Renaissance verse. These relationships are far from being “as dead as butterflies in a cabinet”, as E. F. Hart referred to them in what appears to be the earliest study of the genre. ⁴⁴² In fact, because they register so clearly the social engagement of Renaissance poets, they could be argued to bring the verse of this period to life for the modern reader. Whereas Marotti has shown the dialogism of Renaissance verse generally, this thesis has categorised and attempted to show some of the distinct ways in which specific cultural contexts, social environments and rhetorical strategies pertain to different types of socially dialogic verse exchanges. What I have tried to reflect adequately here is the richness and diversity of the answer-poem without losing sight of those characteristics of verse answering that lend generic coherence to it.

Answer-poetry reflects well the liveliness and dynamism of Renaissance poetics and promises an intellectually valuable resource that can also be highly entertaining. To repeat an earlier quotation from Margaret Downs-Gamble: “argumentative disputation, the ultimate goal in Renaissance education, the ultimate joy in Renaissance entertainment, has been excluded from our consideration of Renaissance poetic”. ⁴⁴³ Downs-Gamble is surely right to highlight this want of attention to the poetics of disputation and its cultural

⁴⁴² Hart (1956), p.22.
⁴⁴³ Downs-Gamble (1996), 2.32.