This case study assesses the implications of rhetorical style in dialogues by Thomas Becon and his contemporary, Desiderius Erasmus. Becon imitated an Erasmian theme but rejected Erasmus’s classically oriented rhetoric and the epistemology it advanced. Instead, he used the dialogue form as a vehicle for what is primarily an oral (homiletic) exhortation, which reveals a profoundly different approach to the pursuit of truth and illustrates the widening cultural gap between moderate and radical religious reformers.

Researchers should cite this work as follows:

• House, S. B., (2025), "Reforming the Tudor Dialogue: A Case Study", HSSCommons: (DOI: )

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1. Renaissance and Reformation

Original publication: House, Seymour Baker. "Reforming the Tudor Dialogue: A Case Study." Renaissance and Reformation 35 (1): 2010. 5-23. DOI: 10.33137/rr.v35i1.10676. This material has been re-published in an unmodified form on the Canadian HSS Commons with the permission of Iter Canada / Renaissance and Reformation. Copyright © the author(s). Their work is distributed by Renaissance and Reformation under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License. For details, see https://creativecommons.org/licenses/.