Abstract

The frequency of couples (or dittologies) is one of the stylistic phenomena which are more characteristic for Guicciardini's prosa in his "History of Italy". This paper proposes a typology of such couples, which are then described and illustrated by examples from Guicciardini's work. The main types are: 1. (almost) synonymic couples; 2. rhetorical couples; 3. couples of elements proceeding from general to particular; 4. couples of elements proceeding from particular to general; 5. couples whose elements are semantically marked.