Enunciative Poetics of Pascalian Pedagogy in Les Provinciales

The aim of this study is to analyse the literary pretext Blaise Pascal uses in Les Provinciales to develop his pedagogical project. Starting with enunciative procedures, the literary nature of this work leads us to understand that its author adopts a new way of defending Jansenism without freeing himself from the field of polemic. The originality of his work lies in the fact that he creates his own imaginary narrative while stepping back and delegating his ideology to the character Louis Montalte to better reach his target. Then, in this same enunciative dynamic, Blaise Pascal combines the theatrical genre with the epistolary genre to allow the characters to express themselves through dialogue and an exchange of letters. Through this mechanism of dialogue and exchange of characters, the author succeeds in showing the contradictions of those who accuse M. Arnauld and Jansenism. And finally, these objectives are achieved thanks to the novelty of his style, which makes this narrator and character act through the rhetoric of naivety and ignorance. This rhetorical technique, based on irony, is a successful pedagogical pretext. Keywords: Enunciation, Rhetoric, Pedagogy, Irony, Aesthetic, Apology, Arbitrator.