The Rise of French: An Examination of Latin's Influence upon Middle French through Analysis of Christine de Pizan's Treatises
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2016
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Swarthmore College. Dept. of Linguistics
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Thesis (B.A.)
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Abstract
In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries the vernacular Middle French began to be used more
extensively as a language of prestige over Latin, which had been overwhelmingly the scholarly
lingua franca as well as the official language in law, politics, medicine, and science. Part of this
linguistic shift involved the elevation of French by latinization practices performed by
translators, clerics, and writers seeking to capture the full meaning of the Latin and impose more
formal structure upon Middle French, as well as to make French into a more serious and
prestigious language. Christine de Pizan, a French author of the late fourteenth and early
fifteenth centuries, provides an excellent case study for the use of Latin to elevate Middle French
as a language of prestige. Sociolinguistically, her choice to write in Middle French over Latin
shows a calculated choice to make her work more accessible to her intended audience of women,
who were literate in the vernacular, but not in Latin. Her use of latinisms, or latinization
processes shows an attempt to elevate her own French so that her writing may be taken seriously
by her academic peers.