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Through charity, this great lady will be the advocate of peace between the prince, her husband (or her son, if she is a widow), and her people, those to whom she has a duty to offer her assistance. If the prince, because of poor advice or for any other reason, should be tempted to harm his subjects, they will know their lady to be full of kindness, pity, and charity. They will come to her, humbly petitioning her to intercede for them before the prince. —christine de pizan Resources of Ambiguity Seneca probably knew what he was doing. Rehearsing death, like remaining concealed and avoiding offense, does not lend itself to abstract philosophical instruction. In keeping with the pedagogical landscape of early-imperial Rome, in which Stoic combinations of axioma and exempla thrived, Seneca relied on vivid imagery and pointed illustrations to guide his readers. His rationale was simple: “The way is long if one follows precepts, but short and helpful, if one follows examples.”1 Hence his soliloquy on death. More than a monologue to contemplate, it was an example to imitate. The same could be said for Letters to Lucilius. As Martha C. Nussbaum notes, the correspondence is itself “one long rich exemplum.”2 It is tempting but difficult to agree with Nussbaum’s characterization, if only because scholarly and popular notions of exemplarity often center on Aristotle’s use of the term paradeigma, from the Greek verb paradeiknumi, meaning “to exhibit side by side,” “to compare,” “to indicate,” “to point out.”3 The Latin exemplum on which Seneca relied—from the verb eximere, 3 mirrors for the queen: exemplary figures on the eve of civil war McCormick_03.indd 52 9/21/11 5:04 PM meaning “to cut out,” “to subtract,” “to free,” “to make an exception of”—has received scant attention.4 The contrast between these ancestral terms is too striking to ignore. Unlike the Greek paradeigma, which associates the example with processes of illumination, display, sight, and indication, the Latin exemplum identifies it with processes of selection, excision, combination, and discontinuity. To this extent, the etymological characteristic of Seneca’s exemplum makes explicit dimensions of exemplarity not indicated in Aristotle ’s paradeigma. Any thorough conception of the example must account for its Greek and Latin origins. This chapter attempts to do so by theorizing the example as a rhetorical figure constitutively split between the activities of illumination and detachment, signification and subtraction—the respective structural vocations of the Greek paradeigma and the Latin exemplum. As a paradeigma, the example shows its belonging to a class of similar objects, figures, or events. In exhibiting the intelligibility of this set, however, the example also steps out from it, marking itself as a singular exclusion, an exemplum. It is at once a part of and apart from the group of entities it designates.5 In this sense, the rhetoric of exemplarity is a site at which moments of ambiguity necessarily arise. Rather than disposing of this ambiguity, I would like to study and clarify the example as a strategic resource of ambiguity. As we shall see, the example is a linguistic device for introducing ambiguity into any given rhetorical situation, and in so doing opening up opportunities for political judgment and social transformation.6 In support of this argument, I analyze the rhetoric of exemplarity in the work of Christine de Pizan, a late-medieval feminist and France’s first woman of letters. Specifically, I focus on her use of exemplary figures in a 1405 letter to Isabeau of Bavaria, then the queen of France. In this letter, Christine recites tales of admirable and infamous women in hopes of persuading the queen to intervene in a political quarrel between the dukes of Orléans and Burgundy, which was then threatening the welfare of France. By pitting the virtues of Princess Veturia, Queen Esther, Bathsheba, and Blanche of Castile against the vices of Jezebel and Olympias, she encourages Isabeau to consider her relation to the history of womankind. Depending on how she exercises her authority as queen, Christine suggests, the virtues or vices of these predecessors will recur, thereby writing Isabeau into the annals of history as an example of judicious or immoderate leadership. At issue in this constellation of an exemplary past, imperative present, and emerging future is not only an occasion for the queen to exercise political judgment, but also an extension of Seneca’s attitude toward history. For Christine, as mirrors for the queen 53 McCormick_03...

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