Why this discrepancy between the views of modern critics such as Gaston Paris, Arturo Farinelli, Henri Hauvette, and Marie-Joseph Pinet, who disparage the work, and the praise given it by Christine’s contemporaries?
Decentering history: local stories and cultural crossing in a global world
December 9, 2013 By
Natalie Zemon Davis’ lecture at the 2010 Ludwig Holberg Prize Symposium
The Voices of Counsel: Women and Civic Rhetoric in the Middle Ages
April 11, 2013 By
A full discussion of women’s civic rhetoric in the Middle Ages has been somewhat obfuscated for two reasons: persistent generalities about women’s roles, and generalities about the nature of the civic itself in the Middle Ages.
Interpreting Warfare and Knighthood in Late Medieval France: Writers and Their Sources in the Reign of King Charles VI (1380-1422)
March 10, 2013 By
Romances provided the basis of a particular kind of view of knighthood and warfare that was very influential on other literature concerning knights and warfare, as much as it was on real life practices and attitudes.
Christine de Pizan in her study
January 20, 2013 By
By the time Christine began the Cité des dames which she completed in 1405 she stated firmly that it had become the “habit of my life” to study literature (in which she included history) and as usual she was sitting in her cell. But how did this become such a habit?
Medieval Feminine Humanism and Geoffrey Chaucer’s Presentation of the Anti-Cecilia
November 22, 2012 By
Perhaps the tale has been dismissed because, compared to the other tales, it appears to be simple and straightforward. Lynn Staley Johnson points out that “most Chaucerians hold that this legend could not have been written before about 1373” and further that “it is generally accepted that Chaucer decided to include the legend in the Canterbury book relatively late in the Canterbury period” .
How to be a Man, Though Female: Changing Sex in Medieval Romance
November 12, 2012 By
Gender participates in a series of taxonomies that structure the social order, and it therefore participates in processes beyond itself, such as Christianity and knighthood, which are equally about identity within the world of chivalric romance. Therefore, the inscription of one often helps to define the other.
“The King’s Library: Construction, Representation and Reception of the Ideal Kingship in the Late French Middle Ages”
October 6, 2012 By
This paper on Charles V of France and his contribution to education was given on October 5th, 2012 as part of a workshop between Freiburg and the University of Toronto.
“Doulce chose est que mariage”: Exemplarity and Advice in the Works of Christine de Pizan
August 29, 2012 By
I first examine the autobiographical elements of Christine’s works that highlight her personal marital experience. Christine draws authority from her first-hand knowledge of marriage, which supersedes the flawed assumptions of scholars lacking this life experience.
Nero, Emperor and Tyrant, in the Medieval French Tradition
August 21, 2012 By
Nero ruled the Roman Empire from 54 to 68 CE, bringing to an end the Julio-Claudian dynasty. Perversely attractive and also thoroughly abhorrent, he evoked both positive and negative images.
Constructions of Gender in Medieval Welsh Literature
June 17, 2012 By
The discussion of gender in medieval literary criticism is generally considered
to be a relatively new field, having achieved real momentum only in the latter half of the twentieth century. However, since it was the early fifteenth century when Christine de Pisan wrote a response to Jean de Meun’s Romance of the Rose, it cannot really be imagined that the medieval audience was too primitive to be fully aware of the subtext inside their stories.
Women and Their Fathers in Three French Medieval Literary Works
June 16, 2012 By
The significance of fathers with regard to their adult daughters seems to be composed of two dominant facets: protection and oppression.
The Roman De La Rose and the Thirteenth Century Prohibitions of Homosexuality
June 11, 2012 By
This paper, a tentative approach by someone who is not an expert in this area or on this text, argues that Guillaume de Lorris offers a veiled description of a male to male love relationship.
Christine de Pizan and Jean Gerson on the Body Politic: The Limits of Intellectual Influence?
February 5, 2012 By
The present paper represents a small attempt to test competing hypotheses about the substance of the intellectual friendship between Christine and Jean by examining one overlapping theme in their respective body of writings: the organic metaphor between the human body and the political community.
Christine de Pizan’s Enseignemens moraux: Good Advice for Several Generations
October 23, 2011 By
Christine de Pizan’s Enseignemens moraux: Good Advice for Several Generations Reno, Christine (VASSAR COLLEGE) Christine de Pisan: The Making of the Queen’s Manuscript (2005) Abstract Christine de Pizan’s Enseignemens moraux, or Moral teachings, is a collection, in the modern edition by Maurice Roy, of one hundred thirteen nuggets of moral and practical advice addressed to the […]
Christine de Pizan’s City of Ladies: A Monumental (Re)construction of, by, and for Women of All Time
September 2, 2011 By
Christine de Pizan’s City of Ladies: A Monumental (Re)construction of, by, and for Women ofAll Time Wagner, Jill E. Medieval Feminist Forum, 44, no. 1 (2008) Abstract Christine de Pizan’s Book of the City of Ladies, written over six centuries ago, is neither simple nor simplistic. As the first known history of women in Western civilization from […]
Christine de Pizan’s Advice to Prostitutes
August 31, 2011 By
In late medieval Paris, prostitutes were everywhere, it seems. Looking at the map published in Bronislaw Geremek’s study of the margins of medieval society we get the impression that prostitutes were in fact not marginal at all, at least as far as their locations are concerned.
A Medieval Gateway to Feminist Education: Christine de Pizan’s Subversive Revision of Boccaccio
August 17, 2011 By
A Medieval Gateway to Feminist Education: Christine de Pizan’s Subversive Revision of Boccaccio Kivilcim Yavuz (İSTANBUL BİLGİ UNIVERSITY, TURKEY) Paper given at 2nd INTERNATIONAL STUDENTS’ CONFERENCE, BASKENT UNIVERSITY, 27-29 MARCH (2002) Abstract The Zenobia figure is the mainstay of the defence of women’s education in the transition period from the medieval to the modern. […]
Christine de Pizan and the Querelle de la Rose: Combating Misogyny with Morality
March 21, 2011 By
Christine de Pizan and the Querelle de la Rose: Combating Misogyny with Morality By Margaret E. Loebe Honors Journal (2006) Introduction: Christine de Pizan, a fifteenth-century French writer, was the first professional female author to publish in her own name since Sappho in Ancient Greece. Not only did Christine champion women’s moral equality with men, […]
Christine de Pizan: A Fifteenth Century Champion of Women
February 16, 2011 By
Despite the obstacles faced by women in the late medieval period, one woman without recognized public authority created her own authority and wielded power in a significant way. That woman was Christine de Pizan.
A Woman in the Mind’s Eye (and not): Narrators and Gazes in Chaucer’s Clerks’s Tale and in Two Analogues
January 1, 2011 By
A Woman in the Mind’s Eye (and not): Narrators and Gazes in Chaucer’s Clerks’s Tale and in Two Analogues By Robin Waugh Philological Quarterly, Vol. 79, Iss. 1 (2000) Abstract: Versions of the Griselda story by Petrarch, Geoffrey Chaucer and Christine de Pizan present an opportunity to investigate the connections between one’s gaze and one’s […]
The Sibylline voices of Christine de Pizan
November 16, 2010 By
The Sibyl’s importance as an authorizing figure in Christine de Pizan’s oeuvre is widely acknowledged but universally under-estimated.
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