Le discours argumentatif chez Christine de Pizan: genèse de l’énoncé complexe

Abstract

The aim of this study is to characterize the structuring of complex utterance in Christine de Pizan’s writing and to situate the syntax of this utterance in relation to that of the authors of her time. We will examine mainly the role of this complex utterance structure in argumentative text. Two particular syntactic aspects are thus taken into consideration: on the one hand, the topicalization of a clause, which makes it possible to connect clausal content with a comment, in particular in refutative pattern, on the other hand, the correlative structures, strongly influenced by Latin prose, whether it be the classical oratory period or the mediaeval legal Latin. With regard to the first point, it will be observed how the articulation of the topic and the commentary leads to a hierarchisation of the clause, which distinguishes Christine’s syntax from that of many authors of that time, whose writing is characterized on this point by anacoluthon. The examination of these aspects of the argumentative text shows the presence of two opposing tendencies in Christine’s prose, on the one hand the use of simple linking of clauses by “enunciative linking” without clear hierarchisation, on the other hand the more or less marked integration of topicalized dependent clause, construction which is coherent with the progressive structuring of a unit corresponding to the “complex sentence”.