(Minor Field) Christine de Pizan

RATIONALE I am reading Christine de Pizan because her oeuvre encompasses most of the major literary genres of the late middle ages. She wrote lyric poetry, allegory, social complaint, literary criticism, debate poetry, moral verse, political manuals, and vernacular religious meditation. For all this range, I am also reading Christine because her work, generally speaking, falls within the categories of interest set up for my primary field, namely, vernacular theological and exemplary texts. That is, barring her lyric poetry, Christine's work is almost all expressly didactic in intent. Indeed, she seems to have seen such works as the only suitable ones for consumption. For example, in one of her conduct manuals, Le livre de trois vertus, Christine writes to royal women, "The lady willingly will read books inculcating good habits, as well as studying on occasion devotional books. She will disdain volumes describing dishonest habits or vice. Never allowing them in her household, she will not permit them in the presence of any daughter, relative, or lady-in-waiting" [Charity Cannon Willard, trans., A Medieval Woman's Mirror of Honor: The Treasury of the City of Ladies (New York: Bard Hall, 1989), 93]. Though the Roman de la Rose, her particular bête noire, would have certainly been banished from Christine's ideal household (she did much to deny it any positive didactic value in the epistolary debate termed the Querelle de la Rose), she would have called for interpretative practices that sought to draw favorable morals from any of the texts allowed in. She did as much, for example, during the Querelle, when she argued that the more biliously misogynist passages of Ecclesiasticus-which, as scripture, could not be forbidden-must be interpreted allegorically, at least, in ways that did not condemn women. This stance in defense of women no doubt has attracted many critics to Christine's work. She is the first secular professional woman writer in the West, and her moral and political commentary often sounds notes in harmony with contemporary feminist concerns such as equal access to education for males and females, the deleterious effects of misogynist art, and domestic abuse. Similarly, Christine has also suffered from readings charged by contemporary debates about feminism: Antifeminist academics once derided her as a humorless bluestocking, and, more recently, other academics have lambasted Christine because her feminism was not adequately radical. My reading in criticism for my primary field should help to untangle some of these debates by embedding Christine's conduct literature within the topoi of late medieval didactic texts. At the same time, it will be fascinating, I suspect, to track how an individual identified author, across the body of her work, engages with these topoi. Conversely, Christine studies, which have unsurprisingly become something of an industry in the past twenty years, will help my reading of English didactic works. Christine scholars have brought a great deal of sophistication to interpretations of didactic works, and have demonstrated agility in treating works that, at first glance, seem to be nothing more than bland support for the status quo. I look forward to availing myself of this interpretative sophistication. By the time I have finished reading for orals, my understanding both of Christine's oeuvre and of the works in my primary field will have informed and enriched one another.

PRIMARY WORKS Verse: Cent Ballades, Virelays, Rondeaux Enseignments L'Epistre au Dieu d'Amours Le Debat de deux amans Le Dit de la Rose Le Ditié de Jehanne d'Arc Le Livre de la Mutacion de Fortune Le Livre des trois jugemens Le Livre du chemin de long estude Le Livre du dit de Poissy Proverbes moraux Prose: L'Avision L'Epistre de la prison de vie humaine L'Espistre d'Othea Le Livre de la Cité des Dames Le Livre de la paix Le Livre de Trois Vertus Le Livre des fais d'armes et de chevalerie Le Livre des fais et bonnes meurs du sage Roy Charles V Le Livre du corps de policie Querelle de la Rose Sept psaumes allegorisés

SECONDARY WORKS — Brabant, Margaret, ed. Politics, Gender, and Genre: The Political Thought of Christine de Pizan. Boulder: Westview P, 1992. — Brown-Grant, Rosalind. Christine de Pizan and the Moral Defense of Women: Reading Beyond Gender. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1999. — Brownlee, Kevin. "Discourses of the Self: Christine de Pizan and the Rose" Romanic Review 78 (1988): 199-221. — Campbell, John, and Nadia Margolis, eds. Christine de Pizan 2000: Studies on Christine de Pizan in Honour of Angus J. Kennedy. Atlanta, GA: Rodopi, 2000. — Delany, Sheila. "Mothers to Think Back Through: Who Are They? The Ambiguous Example of Christine de Pizan." In Medieval Texts and Contemporary Readers. Eds. Laurie A. Finke and Martin B. Shichtman. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1987. Pp. 177-97. — Desmond, Marilynn, ed. Christine de Pizan and the Categories of Difference. Medieval Cultures 14. Minneapolis: U of Minneapolis P, 1998. — Doutrepont, George. Littérature française à cour des dues de Bourgogne: Philippe le Hardi, Jean sans Peur, Philippe le Bon, Charles le Téméraire. Geneve: Slatkine Reprints, 1970. — Dulac, L. and B. Ribémont, eds. Sur le chemin de longue étude . . . Actes du colloque d'Orléans, juillet 1995. Paris: Honoré Champion, 1998. — Dulac, L. and B. Ribémont, eds. Une femme de letters au moyen âge: Études autour de Christine de Pizan. Orléans: Paradigme, 1995. — Krueger, Roberta L. "Nouvelles Choses: Social Instability and the Problem of Fashion in the Livre du Chevalier de la Tour Landry, the Ménagier de Paris, and Christine de Pizan's Livre des Trois Vertus." In Medieval Conduct. Eds. Kathleen Ashley and Robert L. A. Clark. Medieval Cultures 29. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 2001. Pp. 49-85. — Laidlaw, J. C. "Christine de Pizan, the Earl of Salisbury and Henry IV." French Studies 36(1982): 129-43. — Mombello, Gianni. "Quelques aspects de la pensée politique de Christine de Pizan d'apres ses oeuvres publiées." In Culture etpolitique en France à l'époque de l'humanisme et de la Renaissance. Ed. Franco Simone. Turin: Academia delle Scienze, 1974. Pp. 43-153. — Richards, Earl Jeffrey, ed. Christine de Pizan and the Medieval French Lyric. Gainesville: UP of Florida, 1998. — Richards, Earl Jeffrey, ed., with Joan Williamson, Nadia Margolis, and Christine Reno. Reinterpreting Christine de Pizan. Athens: U of Georgia P, 1992. — Willard, Charity Cannon. Christine de Pizan: Her Life and Works. New York: Persea Books, 1984. — Willard, Charity Cannon. "A Fifteenth-Century View of Women's Role in Medieval Society: Christine de Pizan's Livre des Trois Vertus.'' In The Role of Women in the Middle Ages. Ed. Rosmarie T. Morewedge. Albany: 1975. — Zimmermann, Margaret and Dina de Rentiis, eds. The City of Scholars: New Approaches to Christine de Pizan. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1994.