Que voit-on dans le manuscrit Patin ? Modèle oral de la communication, ordre des écrits

The extremely clean condition of the Vienna manuscript and its neat and regular handwriting suggest that this copy was intended for circulation beyond the circle of the Patin family. Moreover, it is an elaborate and genuinely literary product, haunted by a literary culture. The so-called oral source of the text needs to be relativised : it corresponds to the fashion for oral communication in the 17th century, which characterises the « galant » archives and mundane epistolary practice.