Abstract: Numerous texts from Early Modern France purport to depict the reality of women's speech. Indeed, dozens of works present themselves as verbatim transcriptions of women engaging in group conversation. Their speech is characterized within these works as chattering, babbling nonsense—hence, the caquets, babil, or badinage of the works' titles. Such works foreground voices presented as belonging to women, while at the same time mocking those women's speech as outlandish and disorderly. Other works, however, are shaped as analytical discussions of the ways in which women express themselves, rather than as imaginary representations of such women speaking. One such text is Nicolas de Cholières's Après-Disnées (1585–87), with a chapter entitled "Du babil et caquet des femmes." Here, the named (male) author-narrator figure depicts two men characters and relates their conversation about women talking. Terms familiar from the caquet repertory are nonetheless used to characterize women's speech: women are " causeuses, babillardes, langagieres ," etc. However, in this case, the reader is not granted apparent access to the actual sound patterns of the women's voices speaking. This essay investigates how Cholières's piece, by abandoning the device of the secretary character, inserts yet another layer between the reader and the women's verbatim conversations.
Kathleen Loysen (Wed,) studied this question.