socially, dialogic, artistic geniuses, verse epistles, dialectically, libel laws, reformation, individualistic, independent voices, hostile"

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“socially dialogic context of the manuscript miscellanies and poetry anthologies”, and observes that answer-poetry is “less […] the product of isolated artistic geniuses than […] continuous with other forms of communication”. ²⁰ Although my material might have been arranged in a variety of others ways, it seemed helpful to break down Marotti’s definition into the categories of socially and antisocially dialogic verse which make up the two parts of this thesis. Socially dialogic exchanges are then divided into courtship verses, ones between married couples or about marriage and familiar verse epistles. What I term antisocially dialogic exchanges are divided into flyting and responses to libel and satire. The lines of division are decided primarily by subject matter, but the role of subjectivity and the way poets situate themselves within particular subjective frameworks is also important. Whereas hostile verse exchanges tend towards presenting their personas in the guise of individualistic, independent voices, dependant upon no external authority excepting that of their monarch or church, there is a corresponding tendency in socially dialogic verses towards intersubjectivity and the fostering of the impression that social theories are being formulated or confirmed through a process of collaborative reasoning.

The two chapters of Part One concentrate on antisocially dialogic verse exchanges. The sixteenth-century social climate was ripe for cultivating a dialectically fractious culture. Despite the civilising, courteous sort of debate propagated by the conduct book, the religious divides precipitated by the Reformation, the surge of defamation and the inadequacy of libel laws, among other influences, ensured that the debate orientated schooling of the literate classes would be employed to make verse answering one of the most conspicuous forms of agonistic poetic expression during the period.

In Chapter One I focus upon verse exchanges that trade in libel and satire. I look

²⁰ Marotti (1995), p.159 and p.160.

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