ABSTRACT
Dialogue and utopia in the early modern period have not traditionally been discussed in terms of each other. Both dialogue and utopia are what might be called quasi-fictional genres, and this shared hybrid status constitutes what is perhaps the main axis of their relationship. Between early modern dialogue and the texts that elaborate the alternative worlds staged by their authors as demonstrable improvements over the social orders of their day: a connection that is grounded in the problematic standing of both dialogue and utopia in relation to fiction. The reciprocity of dialogue and utopia, moreover, is one determined not only by cultural and political pressures but by the protocols that inform fictional texts produced in the early modern period. Through these protocols, and through their status as fictional genres that will not remain confined to the realm of fiction, both dialogue and utopia may be thought of as fictions that achieve a degree of agency in the world of reality.
