In this Book

summary
Christine de Pizan, an Italian-born writer in French in the early fifteenth century, composed lyric poetry, debate poetry, political biography, and allegory. At times complicit, at times subversive, at times revisionary, her texts constantly negotiate the hierarchical and repressive discourses of late medieval court culture. How they do so is the focus of this volume, which places Christine’s work in the context of larger discussions about medieval authorship, identity, and categories of difference.

Contributors from the fields of history, literature, legal theory, art history, and medieval studies offer a truly interdisciplinary perspective on the Christine corpus. Their essays address Christine’s textual interventions into the discourses of warfare and rape, her anxiety about the efficacy of education, and her adoption of a vernacular prose style. The authors situate Christine’s texts within medieval medical discourse, debates between theology and philosophy, the tradition of Ovidian discourse, and the iconography of late medieval manuscript culture. They also explore the ways in which her work was shaped by institutional patronage, by its reception in early print culture, and by later compilation. 

Establishing Christine de Pizan’s corpus as part of the legacy of critical feminist discourse, this volume ultimately demonstrates the great value of premodern textual cultures for postmodern accounts of difference.

Contributors: Michel-André Bossy, Brown U; Cynthia J. Brown, U of California, Santa Barbara; Mary Anne C. Case, U of Virginia; Thelma Fenster, Fordham U; Mary Weitzel Gibbons; Monica H. Green, Duke U; Judith L. Kellogg, U of Hawaii, Manoa; Roberta Krueger, Hamilton College; Deborah McGrady, Western Michigan U; Benjamin M. Semple, Yale U; Charity Cannon Willard; Diane Wolfthal, Arizona State U.

Table of Contents

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  1. Cover
  2. p. Cover
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  1. Title Page, Copyright
  2. pp. i-iv
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  1. Contents
  2. pp. v-vi
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  1. Acknowledgments
  2. p. vii
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  1. Introduction: From Book-Lined Cell to Cyborg Hermeneutics
  2. pp. ix-xix
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  1. Part I: The Belly of the Monster
  2. p. 1
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  1. 1. Christine de Pizan on the Art of Warfare
  2. Charity Cannon Willard
  3. pp. 3-15
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  1. 2. Christine’s Anxious Lessons: Gender, Morality, and the Social Order from the Enseignemens to the Avision
  2. pp. 16-40
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  1. 3. “Douleur sur toutes autres”: Revisualizing the Rape Script in the Epistre Othea and the Cité des dames
  2. Diane Wolfthal
  3. pp. 41-70
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  1. 4. Christine de Pizan and the Authority of Experience
  2. Mary Anne C. Case
  3. pp. 71-87
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  1. Part II: Situated Knowledges
  2. p. 89
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  1. 5. “Perdre son latin”: Christine de Pizan and Vernacular Humanism
  2. Thelma Fenster
  3. pp. 91-107
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  1. 6. The Critique of Knowledge as Power: The Limits of Philosophy and Theology in Christine de Pizan
  2. Benjamin M. Semple
  3. pp. 108-127
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  1. 7. The Bath of the Muses and Visual Allegory in the Chemin de long estude
  2. Mary Weitzel Gibbons
  3. pp. 128-145
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  1. 8. “Traittié tout de mençonges”: The Secrés des dames, “Trotula,” and Attitudes toward Women’s Medicine in Fourteenth- and Early-Fifteenth-Century France
  2. Monica H. Green
  3. pp. 146-178
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  1. Part III: Engendering Authorship
  2. p. 179
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  1. 9. Transforming Ovid: The Metamorphosis of Female Authority
  2. Judith L. Kellogg
  3. pp. 181-194
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  1. 10. What Is a Patron? Benefactors and Authorship in Harley 4431, Christine de Pizan’s Collected Works
  2. Deborah McGrady
  3. pp. 195-214
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  1. 11. The Reconstruction of an Author in Print: Christine de Pizan in the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries
  2. Cynthia J. Brown
  3. pp. 215-235
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  1. 12. Arms and the Bride: Christine de Pizan’s Military Treatise as a Wedding Gift for Margaret of Anjou
  2. Michel-André Bossy
  3. pp. 236-256
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  1. Works Cited
  2. pp. 257-277
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  1. Contributors
  2. pp. 279-280
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  1. Index
  2. pp. 281-287
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