This dissertation studies the palinode in Renaissance literature as a strategy of dialogic discourse with which authors complicate the interpretation of both the work to which the palinode is appended (the primary ode) and the bipartite text. By offering a model of interpretation which denies the palinodic work a definitive closure, retractions stage and exemplify interpretive polyvocality, and suggest that the best method of reading is one that is conscious of its contingency. Employing a critical methodology grounded on the dialogic theory of M. M. Bakhtin, this dissertation discusses palinode as a textual strategy which engages social, cultural and literary historical heteroglossia.

A chapter on Plato's Phaedrus explores the relocation of palinode from the lyric model of Stesichorus into the context of dialogue, and sees Socrates' palinodic gesture as a paradigmatic treatment for Renaissance writers in its awareness of the dialogic possibilities inherent in the strategy. A discussion of Petrarch's "Vergine Bella," as a palinodic conclusion to the Rime Sparse, concentrates on Petrarch's blending of monologic and dialogic discourses in moments of recantation throughout his work. This oscillation is viewed in relation to the models of recantation and metamorphosis available to Petrarch in Ovid's works (Remedia Amoris, Tristia and Ex Ponto) and Augustine's (The Retractations and Confessions). Chapter Three, on the Griselda tale as it appears in Boccaccio's Decameron, Petrarch's Seniles XVII, 3, and Chaucer's Clerk's Tale, illuminates the intertextual uses of palinodic discourse and its role in establishing the careers of men of letters. A discussion of Chaucer's "Retracciouns" concludes this chapter. Finally, studies of the Rime of Gaspara Stampa and Sidney's Astrophel and Stella analyze these Petrarchan writers' reintroduction of the monologic discourse of their model into the worlds of courtly dialogue. In the case of Stampa, palinode takes on a feminist character through Stampa's use of Ovid's Heroides, while for Sidney, the dramatic interpenetration of court dialogue and Petrarchan monologism retracts and redirects conventional lyric models.