After reviewing the important roles of excitons in nonlinear optical responses, we demonstrate mutual and quantum-mechanical control of radiation field and excitons on the same footing in a microcavity. First we introduce dressed excitons as bosons interacting coherently and reversibly with a radiation mode in the microcavity. Although the vacuum Rabi splitting of the dressed exciton is the same as that of dressed atom, the emission spectrum under strong pumping shows quartet structure different from the triplet of dressed atom. Secondly, the population dynamics of dressed excitons, i.e., one-dimensional polaritons in the mesoscopic system is solved and the dominant distribution on a single mode is demonstrated above the critical pumping.