Dialogue and scientific writings in the 16th century: Cyprian Lucar's translation of Niccolò Tartaglia

Lucar aimed in fact to grasp and clarify Tartaglia’s ideas and principles on such important topics as artillery and ballistics. As both works are structured on a series of 'queries', the dialogic part clearly commands first place and plays the role of a protagonist. The main aim of our paper will be to indepth the way in which modal verbs are deployed by the translator as a tool for conveying intentionality in the strongly persuasive context of a dialogic text with didactic purposes.