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Romuald Ian Lakowski.
Sir Thomas More and the Art of Dialogue.
Ph.D. Diss. U of British Columbia, Fall 1993.
HTML Edition 1995, 1996, 1997


This document is copyright (c) 1997 by Romuald Ian Lakowski, all rights reserved. All sections of Interactive EMLS (iEMLS) and iEMLS as a whole are copyright (c) 1997 by Early Modern Literary Studies, all rights reserved, and may be used and shared in accordance with the fair-use provisions of U.S. copyright law. Archiving and redistribution for profit, or republication of this text in any medium, requires the consent of the copyright holder and the Editor of EMLS.


Sir Thomas More and the Art of Dialogue:

Introduction to Online Edition


Table of Contents

Introduction to Online Edition




Introduction

In my Ph.D. dissertation, "Sir Thomas More and the Art of Dialogue" (UBC, 1993), I investigated the use of dialogue and oration in four of Sir Thomas More's major works, including his The History of King Richard III (both Latin and English versions) and in three dialogues---Book I of Utopia (written in Latin) and in two major English dialogues: The Dialogue Concerning Heresies and A Dialogue of Comfort in Tribulation. The electronic edition is an almost exact copy of the original thesis. (The pagination of the original text is given in {} brackets, e.g. {v}.) The principal changes involve the major two appendices (see A Note on the Two Appendices below).

Abstract

In this study I present an analysis of the structures of four works by Sir Thomas More: The History of Richard III, the 'Dialogue of Counsel' in Book I of Utopia, The Dialogue Concerning Heresies, and The Dialogue of Comfort in Tribulation. My basic thesis is that Thomas More was a superb literary artist and a master of the art of literary dialogue, and that beneath the often apparently rambling and digressive surface of each of these literary works, there is a 'deep structure' that is highly coherent and even tightly organised. I also show that More's use of dialogue in each of the three dialogues is genuinely dialectical---that the individual speakers in the three literary dialogues make a genuine contribution to the development of the argument---and that the movement from speaker to speaker in the History of Richard III is also genuinely dialectical---anticipating the art of the three later dialogues. To this end I have provided an interpretive reading/analysis of each of the works, focussing on More's "art of dialogue" in the passages of direct and indirect speech in Richard III, and in the dialogues between Hythloday and Persona More in Book I of Utopia, between Chancellor More and the Messenger in the Dialogue Concerning Heresies, and between Vincent and Anthony in the Dialogue of Comfort. The thesis also includes two major appendices: Appendix A consisting of about two thousand items of More scholarship organised according to topic, and Appendix B containing detailed analytical summaries of the four works. (The Bibliography is quite comprehensive covering all of More's works and also background studies and biographies.) The two appendices are provided both as part of my argument and as tools for further research.

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Sir Thomas More and the Art of Dialogue

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Extracts from the Report of the External Examiner

The External Examiner for my thesis was Louis L. Martz, Sterling Professor Emeritus of English at Yale University---a well-known Renaissance scholar and the chairman of the St. Thomas More Editorial Project at Yale. (He was also co-editor of the Yale Dialogue of Comfort, one of the works considered in my thesis.) In his external report, he praised certain parts of my thesis in the highest terms. Concerning my chapters on Utopia, Book I, and the Dialogue of Comfort he wrote:

I especially liked his interpretation of the function of the introductory letters for Utopia and his account of the "multi-layered" nature of Utopia, with helpful differentiation of the various "voices" that emerge from the dialogue of Part I.... For the Dialogue of Comfort he is especially perceptive with regard to the dark side of that treatise, and he gives a good account of the background for meditation on Psalm 90.

He also singled out my Thomas More Bibliography for special praise in glowing terms as:

...a huge and highly valuable bibliography of writings about and editions of works by More, along with reviews of many items.... It constitutes the best bibliography of this kind that we have, and it deserves to be published as a guide that would be of great assistence to all scholars of More, on any aspect of his work. It is divided into helpful categories and accompanied by occasional remarks; it goes far beyond anything needed for the dissertation proper, and has research value in its own right.

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A Note on the Two Appendices

THE TEXTUAL SUMMARIES

N.B. The Summaries were originally Appendix A of the dissertation, but were omitted from the library copies at the recommendation of the external examiner. They have been included (essentially unchanged) in the online edition in the hopes that they might be found useful for research purposes by More scholars.

The summaries were originally meant to serve as appendices to the individual chapters but grew to be too long and had to be gathered together separately as the first appendix. The Summary of The History/Historia of Richard III, which was the first to be finished, is complete but quite brief and schematic.

The Summary of Utopia deals only with Book I and the Conclusion to Book II and the two Prefatory Letters by More to Peter Giles. There is also an immensely valuable and very detailed synopsis in French in point form of the structure of More's Utopia in André Prévost's edition: L'Utopie de Thomas More: Présentation, Texte Original, Apparat Critique, Exégèse, Traduction et Notes, (Paris: Mame, 1978), pp. 279--306.

The Summary of A Dialogue of Comfort gives a complete summary of the dialogue structure of what is perhaps More's greatest English work. There is one summary by L. Miles in A Dialogue of Comfort Against Tribulation, (Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1965), pp. 243--251; but it is too brief and fails to bring out the contributions of the individual speakers. In the Yale Edition, Frank Manley provides a detailed analysis (but not outline) of "The Argument of the Book," in CW 12, lxxxvi--cxvii.

The Summary of A Dialogue Concerning Heresies gives a very detailed account of the dialogue structure of More's most important work dealing with the English Reformation---really an epitomê or digest rather than a summary. The Summary of The Dialogue Concerning Heresies, (Books I and II) is complete. However, I was unable to properly complete the Summary of The Dialogue Concerning Heresies, (Books III and IV). The sections that are summarized are done so in great detail. There is a brief and incomplete summary of some of the sections of Books III--IV, that I omitted, in J. Gairdner, "Appendix: Abstract of More's Dialogue," Lollardry and the Reformation in England, 4 vols. (London: MacMillan, 1908--13; rpt. New York: Burt Franklin, 1974), 1: 543--78, esp. 567--78.

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A THOMAS MORE BIBLIOGRAPHY (Summary)

N.B. The Bibliographical Appendix (A Thomas More Bibliography), which consists of over 2,000 items, has been revised and separated into three separate files with separate item numbering. (In the original the item numbering was continuous.) A heavily revised version of the "Bibliography of Thomas More's Utopia" was published in EMLS 1.2 (Aug. 1995). (The links to the Utopia Bibliography are to this file.) The three bibliography files summarized below give a comprehensive bibliography of all aspects of modern More scholarship (both modern editions and secondary scholarship) over the last 100 years from the late 19th century up to the present time.

A. STUDIES OF MORE'S WORKS (Except Utopia)


B. GENERAL BACKGROUND STUDIES AND BIOGRAPHIES


C. A BIBLIOGRAPHY OF THOMAS MORE'S UTOPIA (PUBLISHED IN EMLS 1.2)


[Contents]


This document is copyright (c) 1997 by Romuald Ian Lakowski, all rights reserved. All sections of Interactive EMLS (iEMLS) and iEMLS as a whole are copyright (c) 1997 by Early Modern Literary Studies, all rights reserved, and may be used and shared in accordance with the fair-use provisions of U.S. copyright law. Archiving and redistribution for profit, or republication of this text in any medium, requires the consent of the copyright holder and the Editor of EMLS.


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