Models of Authority in the Rose, Machaut, and Christine de Pizan: A Feminine Recasting of "songe/mensonge" in Le Dit de la Pastoure

Throughout the late Middle Ages, allusions to the Roman de la Rose take the form of direct citation, sidelong glances, and recall of narrative structures and thematic paradigms. So well known was this work that even a small detail incorporated in a text can be a signal to cast our gaze back toward the Rose, setting in motion a range of interpretive possibilities and intertextual resonances. This study will examine just such a detail, namely two specific instances of the rhyme pair "songe/mensonge" (dream/lie)—one in Guillaume de Machaut's 1360 Fontaine amoureuse and the other in Christine de Pizan's 1403 Dit de la Pastoure—against the backdrop of its role in the opening of the Rose. The coincidence of this provocative rhyme pair, in both cases occurring in the context of an allusion to the myth of Paris and in both cases couched in the thematics of dreams and authority, touches upon larger questions about gender and truth. Christine diverges from the Rose model in ways Machaut does not, and here as elsewhere throughout her works, Christine's gender-based recasting of narrative structures and discursive modes results in a new kind of statement about truth, creation, and feminine authority.