Christine de Pizan and the Moral Defence of Women
Reading beyond Gender

The first book-length study of a seminal 'feminist' text from the Middle Ages.

Rosalind Brown-Grant (Author)

9780521641944, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 28 January 2000

244 pages
23.6 x 15.8 x 2.1 cm, 0.465 kg

'This is a lucidly argued, well-structured, original, and perceptive monograph on four of Christine's prose texts.' Medium Aevum

Christine de Pizan's Livre de la Cité des Dames (1405) is justly renowned for its full-scale assault on the misogynist stereotypes which dominated the culture of the Middle Ages. Rosalind Brown-Grant locates the Cité in the context of Christine's defence of women as it developed over a number of years and through a range of different texts. Arguing that Christine tailored her critique of misogyny according to the genre in which she was writing and the audience she was addressing, this study shows that Christine's case for women nonetheless had an underlying unity in its insistence on the moral, if not the social, equality of the sexes. Whilst Christine may not have been a radical in modern feminist terms, she was able to draw upon the cultural resources of her day in order to construct an intellectual authority for herself that challenged the prevailing orthodoxy of the day.

Introduction
1. The 'querelle de la Rose': Christine's critique of misogynist doctrine and literary practice
2. The Epistre Othéa: an ethical and allegorical alternative to the Roman de la Rose?
3. The Avision-Christine: a female exemplar for the princely reader
4. The Livre de la Cités Dames: generic transformation and the moral defence of women
5. The Livre des Trois Vertus: a betrayal of the Cité?

Subject Areas: Literary studies: classical, early & medieval [DSBB]