Quelques remarques sur les échanges rapportés et débats d’idées dans l’œuvre de Christine de Pizan1

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to examine the uses of reported speech in the epistolary discourse of Christine de Pizan. Based on two texts, Le Livre des epistres du debat sus le Rommant de la Rose and the letters inserted in Le Livre du Duc des vrais amants, it first describes the different instances of direct and indirect speech that occur in this corpus as well as the properties of their speakers and addressees. The second part of the study focuses on the role of the textual space of the letter in the representation of dialogic exchanges. Finally, the article takes into account the corpus of Christine de Pizan comprised in the Frantext database, in order to compare the instances of reported speech characterising epistolary discourse with those inserted in narration. Thus it shows that the dialogic exchanges in Christine’s letters are part of an argumentative structure (inherited from texts written in medieval Latin) and that they do not aim to represent spoken language, unlike the reported speech contained in novels or other narrative texts.