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

by Rosalind Brown-Grant

• ISBN13: 9780521537742
• ISBN10: 0521537746
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2003-09-18
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

Christine de Pizan's Livre de la Citè 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 Citè 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.

Table of Contents

Introduction

1. The 'querelle de la Rose': Christine's critique of misogynist doctrine and literary practice

2. The Epistre Othé

a: 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 Cité

s Dames: generic transformation and the moral defence of women

5. The Livre des Trois Vertus: a betrayal of the Cité

?