A fascinating insight into the debates and controversies about the position of women in medieval culture, written by France's first professional woman of letters The pioneering Book of the City of Ladies begins when, feeling frustrated and miserable after reading a male writer's tirade against women, Christine de Pizan has a dreamlike vision where three virtues—Reason, Rectitude and Justice—appear to correct this view. They instruct her to build an allegorical city in which womankind can be defended against slander, its walls and towers constructed from examples of female achievement both from her own day and the past: ranging from warriors, inventors and scholars to prophetesses, artists and saints. Christine de Pizan's spirited defence of her sex was unique for its direct confrontation of the misogyny of her day, and offers a telling insight into the position of women in medieval culture. The Book of the City of Ladies provides positive images of women, ranging from warriors and inventors, scholars to prophetesses, and artists to saints. For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

The Book of the City of Ladies (Penguin Classics)

Literature & Fiction

Christine De Pizan

Rosalind Brown-Grant

British & Irish

Penguin Classics

In 1401, Christine de Pizan (1365OCo1430?), one of the most renowned and prolific woman writers of the Middle Ages, wrote a letter to the provost of Lille criticizing the highly popular and widely read "Romance of the Rose" for its blatant and unwarranted misogynistic depictions of women. The debate that ensued, over not only the merits of the treatise but also of the place of women in society, started Europe on the long path to gender parity. PizanOCOs criticism sparked a continent-wide discussion of issues that is still alive today in disputes about art and morality, especially the civic responsibility of a writer or artist for the works he or she produces. In "Debate of the OC Romance of the Rose," OCO David Hult collects, along with the debate documents themselves, letters, sermons, and excerpts from other works of Pizan, including one from "City of Ladies"OCoher major defense of women and their rightsOCothat give context to this debate.aHere, PizanOCOs supporters and detractors are heard alongside her own formidable, protofeminist voice.a The resulting volume affords a rare look at the way people read and thought about literature in the period immediately preceding the era of print."

Debate of the Romance of the Rose (The Other Voice in Early Modern Europe)

University of Chicago Press

The Love Debate Poems of Christine de Pizan

University Press of Florida

The Book of the City of Ladies

History

World

Persea Books

Recounts the progress of a fifteen-year, clandestine love affair between the Duke, a young knight, and a married noblewoman in fourteenth century France

The Book of the Duke of True Lovers (For Netherlandic Studies; 4)

Poetry

Persea

"Astonishing, original....an early chapter in women's revisionary history [that] offers true eloquence resurrected from the silence of the past."―The New York Times Book Review In dialogues with three celestial ladies, Reason, Rectitude, and Justice, Christine de Pizan (1365-ca. 1429) builds an allegorical fortified city for women using examples of the important contributions women have made to Western Civilization and arguments that prove their intellectual and moral equality to men. Earl Jeffrey Richards' acclaimed translation is used nationwide in the most eminent colleges and universities in America, from Columbia to Stanford.

World Literature

Book by Christine de Pizan, Jane Chance

Christine De Pizan's Letter of Othea to Hector: Translated With Introduction, Notes, and Interpretative Essay (The Focus Library of Medieval Women)

Jane Chance

State Univ of New York at

Née à Venise en 1364, fille de l'astrologue de Charles V, poétesse, historienne, moraliste, Christine de Pizan serait "le premier auteur" de la littérature française. Mariée à quinze ans, mère de trois enfants, bientôt veuve, elle met à profit l'éducation reçue de son père. Championne de son sexe, elle dénonce la misogynie courante de son époque, en particulier dans les milieux cléricaux.
 La Cité des Dames couronne son oeuvre féministe. Profondément déprimée par la lecture d'une satire misogyne, Christine se lamente d'être née femme. Aparaissent alors pour la consoler trois envoyées de Dieu: Raison, Droiture et Justice. Avec leur aide, Christine construira une cité imprenableoù les femmes seront à l'abri des calomnies. Les pierres de ce bel édifice seront les femmes du passé, guerrières, artistes et savantes, amoueuses et saintes! L'argumentation surprend par sa modernité: Christine y aborde le viol, l'égalité des sexes, l'accès des femmes au savoir... La Cité des Dames apparaît comme un ouvrage capital pour l'histoire des femmes et pour la pensée occidentale à l'aube des temps modernes.

Le Livre de la Cité des Dames (Moyen Age)

Contemporary

Stock/Moyen Age

Cent Ballades D'amant Et De Dame

Union Générale dÉditions

Le Livre de la Cité des dames

Genre Fiction

Champion

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Books by Christine De Pizan