Christine de Pizan and the Categories of Difference

Description

Christine de Pizan, an Italian-born writer in French in the early 15th-century, composed lyric poetry, debate poetry, political biography and allegory. At times complicit, at times subversive, at times revisionary, her texts constantly negotiate the hierarchial 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. Contents Acknowledgments Introduction: From Book-Lined Cell to Cyborg Hermeneutics Part I: The Belly of the Monster 1. Christine de Pizan on the Art of Warfare 2. Christine’s Anxious Lessons: Gender, Morality, and the Social Order from the Enseignemens to the Avision 3. “Douleur sur toutes autres”: Revisualizing the Rape Script in the Epistre Othea and the Cité des dames 4. Christine de Pizan and the Authority of Experience Part II: Situated Knowledges 5. “Perdre son latin”: Christine de Pizan and Vernacular Humanism 6. The Critique of Knowledge as Power: The Limits of Philosophy and Theology in Christine de Pizan 7. The Bath of the Muses and Visual Allegory in the Chemin de long estude 8. “Traittié tout de mençonges”: The Secrés des dames, “Trotula,” and Attitudes toward Women’s Medicine in Fourteenth- and Early-Fifteenth-Century France Part III: Engendering Authorship 9. Transforming Ovid: The Metamorphosis of Female Authority 10. What Is a Patron? Benefactors and Authorship in Harley 4431, Christine de Pizan’s Collected Works 11. The Reconstruction of an Author in Print: Christine de Pizan in the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries 12. Arms and the Bride: Christine de Pizan’s Military Treatise as a Wedding Gift for Margaret of Anjou Works Cited Contributors Index A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T V W Y Z