Editing Dialogue (section)

==As genre==
[[File:Politeia beginning. Codex Parisinus graecus 1807.jpg|thumb|Oldest extant text of Plato's ''[[The Republic (Plato)|Republic]]'']]

===Antiquity===
Dialogue as a genre in the [[Middle East]] and [[Asia]] dates back to ancient works, such as [[Sumerian disputations]] preserved in copies from the late third millennium BC,<ref>G. J., and H. L. J. Vanstiphout. 1991. Dispute Poems and Dialogues in the Ancient and Mediaeval Near East: Forms and Types of Literary Debates in Semitic and Related Literatures. Leuven: Department Oriëntalistiek.</ref> [[Rigvedic dialogue hymns]], and the ''[[Mahabharata]]''.

In the West, [[Plato]] ({{Circa|427}} BC – {{Circa|348}} BC) has commonly been credited with the systematic use of dialogue as an independent literary form.{{sfn|Gosse|1911}} Ancient sources indicate, however, that the Platonic dialogue had its foundations in the ''mime'', which the [[Sicily|Sicilian]] poets [[Sophron]] and [[Epicharmus]] had cultivated half a century earlier.{{sfn|Kutzko|2012|p=377}} These works, admired and imitated by Plato, have not survived and we have only the vaguest idea of how they may have been performed.{{sfn|Kutzko|2012|p=381}} The ''Mimes'' of [[Herodas]], which were found in a papyrus in 1891, give some idea of their character.<ref>{{Cite book|url=https://archive.org/details/heroidoumimiambo00hero|page=ix|title=The Mimes of Herodas|publisher=Clarendon Press|first=John Arbuthnot|last=Nairn|year=1904}}</ref>

Plato further simplified the form and reduced it to pure [[Logical argument|argumentative]] conversation, while leaving intact the amusing element of character-drawing.<ref name="gosse">{{Cite EB1911|wstitle=Dialogue |volume=8|pages=156–157|first=Edmund |last=Gosse |author-link=Edmund Gosse }}</ref> By about 400 BC he had perfected the [[Socratic dialogue]].<ref>{{Cite book|title=Merriam-Webster's Encyclopedia of Literature|url=https://archive.org/details/myriadworldsbudd00kons|url-access=registration|pages=[https://archive.org/details/myriadworldsbudd00kons/page/322 322]–323|year=1995|isbn=9780877790426|publisher=Merriam-Webster, Inc}}</ref> All his extant writings, except the ''[[Apology (Plato)|Apology]]'' and [[Epistles (Plato)|Epistles]], use this form.<ref>{{Cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=QE_CAgAAQBAJ&pg=PA405|page=405|title=Ancient Science Through the Golden Age of Greece|first=George|last=Sarton|year=2011|publisher=Courier Corporation |isbn=9780486274959}}</ref>

Following Plato, the dialogue became a major literary genre in antiquity, and several important works both in Latin and in Greek were written. Soon after Plato, [[Xenophon]] wrote his own ''[[Symposium (Xenophon dialogue)|Symposium]]''; also, Aristotle is said to have written several philosophical dialogues in Plato's style (of which only fragments survive).<ref>{{Cite book|title=Cosmic and Meta-Cosmic Theology in Aristotle's Lost Dialogues |url=https://books.google.com/books?isbn=9004091556|isbn=978-9004091559 |first=A. P. |last=Bos |year=1989 |page=xviii | publisher=BRILL }}</ref> In the 2nd century CE, [[Christian apologetics|Christian apologist]] [[Justin Martyr]] wrote the ''[[Dialogue with Trypho]]'', which was a discourse between Justin representing Christianity and Trypho representing Judaism. Another Christian apologetic dialogue from the time was the ''[[Octavius (dialogue)|Octavius]]'', between the Christian Octavius and pagan Caecilius.

===Japan===
In the East, in 13th century Japan, dialogue was used in important philosophical works. In the 1200s, Nichiren Daishonin wrote some of his important writings in dialogue form, describing a meeting between two characters in order to present his argument and theory, such as in "Conversation between a Sage and an Unenlightened Man" (The Writings of Nichiren Daishonin 1: pp.&nbsp;99–140, dated around 1256), and "On Establishing the Correct Teaching for the Peace of the Land" (Ibid., pp.&nbsp;6–30; dated 1260), while in other writings he used a question and answer format, without the narrative scenario, such as in "Questions and Answers about Embracing the Lotus Sutra" (Ibid., pp.&nbsp;55–67, possibly from 1263). The sage or person answering the questions was understood as the author.

===Modern period===
Two French writers of eminence borrowed the title of Lucian's most famous collection; both [[Bernard le Bovier de Fontenelle|Fontenelle]] (1683) and [[François Fénelon|Fénelon]] (1712) prepared ''Dialogues des morts'' ("Dialogues of the Dead").{{sfn|Gosse|1911}} Contemporaneously, in 1688, the French philosopher [[Nicolas Malebranche]] published his ''Dialogues on [[Metaphysics]] and Religion'', thus contributing to the genre's revival in philosophic circles. In English non-dramatic literature the dialogue did not see extensive use until [[George Berkeley|Berkeley]] employed it, in 1713, for his treatise, ''[[Three Dialogues between Hylas and Philonous]]''.<ref name="gosse"/> His contemporary, the Scottish philosopher [[David Hume]] wrote ''Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion.'' A prominent 19th-century example of literary dialogue was [[Walter Savage Landor|Landor]]'s ''[[Imaginary Conversations]]'' (1821–1828).<ref>{{Cite book|chapter=Walter Savage Landor|title=English Prose of the Nineteenth Century|page=215|chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=eWWX3INTw78C&pg=PA215|first1=Hardin|last1=Craig|first2=Joseph M.|last2=Thomas|year=1929}}</ref>

In Germany, [[Christoph Martin Wieland|Wieland]] adopted this form for several important satirical works published between 1780 and 1799. In Spanish literature, the ''Dialogues'' of [[Juan de Valdés|Valdés]] (1528) and those on ''Painting'' (1633) by [[Vincenzo Carducci]] are celebrated. Italian writers of collections of dialogues, following Plato's example, include [[Torquato Tasso]] (1586), [[Galileo Galilei|Galileo]] (1632), [[Ferdinando Galiani|Galiani]] (1770), [[Giacomo Leopardi|Leopardi]] (1825), and a host of others.<ref name="gosse"/>

In the 19th century, the French returned to the original application of dialogue. The inventions of "[[Sibylle Gabrielle Marie Antoinette Riqueti de Mirabeau|Gyp]]", of [[Henri Léon Emile Lavedan|Henri Lavedan]], and of others, which tell a mundane [[anecdote]] wittily and maliciously in conversation, would probably present a close analogy to the lost mimes of the early Sicilian poets. English writers including [[F. Anstey|Anstey Guthrie]] also adopted the form, but these dialogues seem to have found less of a popular following among the English than their counterparts written by French authors.<ref name="gosse"/>

The [[Platonic dialogue]], as a distinct genre which features Socrates as a speaker and one or more interlocutors discussing some philosophical question, experienced something of a rebirth in the 20th century. Authors who have recently employed it include [[George Santayana]], in his eminent ''Dialogues in Limbo'' (1926, 2nd ed. 1948; this work also includes such historical figures as [[Alcibiades]], [[Aristippus]], [[Avicenna]], [[Democritus]], and [[Dionysius the Younger]] as speakers). Also [[Edith Stein]] and [[Iris Murdoch]] used the dialogue form. Stein imagined a dialogue between [[Edmund Husserl]] (phenomenologist) and [[Thomas Aquinas]] (metaphysical realist). {{Anchor|Murdoch}}Murdoch included not only Socrates and Alcibiades as interlocutors in her work ''Acastos: Two Platonic Dialogues'' (1986), but featured a young Plato himself as well.<ref>{{Cite book|title=Iris Murdoch and the Art of Imagining |first=Marije|last=Altorf |publisher=Bloomsbury Academic|year=2008 |isbn=9780826497574|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=02QhAQAAIAAJ|page=92 }}</ref> More recently [[Timothy Williamson]] wrote ''Tetralogue'', a philosophical exchange on a train between four people with radically different [[Epistemology|epistemological]] views.

In the 20th century, philosophical treatments of dialogue emerged from thinkers including [[Mikhail Bakhtin]], [[Paulo Freire]], [[Martin Buber]], and [[David Bohm]]. Although diverging in many details, these thinkers have proposed a holistic concept of dialogue.<ref>{{Cite book|title=The Promise of Dialogue: The dialogic turn in the production and communication of knowledge|year=2011|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=b9ZwM1XEI4IC&pg=PA26|first=Louise|last=Phillips|isbn=9789027210296|pages=25–26|publisher=John Benjamins }}</ref> Educators such as Freire and [[Ramón Flecha]] have also developed a body of theory and techniques for using [[egalitarian dialogue]] as a pedagogical tool.<ref>{{Cite book|first=Ramón|last=Flecha|year=2000|title=Sharing Words: Theory and Practice of Dialogic Learning|location=Lanham, MD|publisher=Rowman and Littlefield}}</ref>