Proposals for the edition of the mixed tradition of the "Book of the three Virtues" of Christine de Pizan: filiations, fluctuations, frustrations...

Christine de Pizan's Livre des Trois Vertus has survived through two author-controlled manuscripts, twenty-one scribal manuscripts and three early printed books, thus in a mixed textual tradition. Charity Cannon Willard's and Eric Hicks' critical edition is based on the sole auctorial manuscript accessible in 1989, controlled by a selection of several scribal manuscripts and by two early printed editions. A new philological and archeological examination of this tradition and its variants (in particular with regard to the second auctorial manuscript, bought by the Bibliotheque nationale de France in 1995 and in private collection so far) leads to reevaluate this edition and discuss the epistemological and methodological tools necessary to establish a Middle French text surviving in a semi-auctorial tradition, in particular the choice of the base manuscript; the evaluation and presentation of the variants, scribal as well as auctorial; the emendation of the text.