de Pisan, Christine

Christine de Pisan

French poet, scholar, and essayist Christine de Pisan (1363–1431) remains known more than five centuries after her death for her writings defending women, among which La cité de dames and Le livre du trésor de la cité de dames are most respected.

De Pisan ranks among the most important intellectuals of her day and certainly the most noted woman writer of the medieval period. In her philosophical writings and commentaries she was resolute in her support of a woman's right to pursue education and attain prominence within society in relation to her accomplishments. Her many poems, essays, and books, widely distributed and read during her lifetime, have influenced readers throughout Europe and Britain through the many translated editions that have since been produced. Among her most notable works in defense of women's role in medieval European society, de Pisan's La cité de dames recounts for readers the accomplishes of women from history, providing medieval men and women with a sense of the possibilities that can be attained by women when allowed education and social freedoms.

An Education at Court

Born in Venice in 1363, de Pisan was the daughter of Italian scholar Tommaso di Benvenuto da Pizzano, a highly educated man who had been appointed astrologer to the court of Charles V of France. In 1369 the five-year-old de Pisan traveled from Venice to the French court, where she was educated by her father in such academic subjects as literature, Greek, and Latin, as well as becoming schooled in the habits of the French court. Because of her father's many intellectual interests, the young de Pisan had full run of a vast family library that included books on not only literature, history, classics, and astrology, but also scientific advancements, religion, and works engaged in the philosophical arguments underway in France at the time.

In 1380, the same year France's King Charles V died, fifteen-year-old de Pisan married Étienne du Castel, a 24-year-old notary and member of the French court who had been reared in Picardy. The couple, who had three children, enjoyed a relationship in which mutual respect played a large part; Castel encouraged his young wife's intelligence and penchant for poetry and self-expression, while she appreciated his gentle demeanor and loyalty. Tragically, during a wave of bubonic plague that was then ravaging Europe, in 1389 Castel died while on a trip to Beauvais with the king, leaving twenty-five-year-old de Pisan to raise her daughter and two sons on her own. Unfortunately, de Pisan's responsibilities did not end there: she also had to shoulder her husband's financial debts, which were the subject of a prolonged dispute, as well as support her now-widowed and debt-ridden mother and a niece. Because her father's death in 1386 had severed family ties to the new French monarch, King Charles VI, there was little family support to draw on. Although English monarch Henry IV and Milanese ruler Galeazzo Visconti both offered de Pisan a place within their courts, the poetess had no wish to leave her beloved France. Instead, she decided to rely on her wit, her intelligence, and her love of words and write poetry, becoming in the process one of France's first professional writers.

Patronage

Fortunately for de Pisan, many in positions of power knew of and respected her talents, and she was able to gain the patronage of the French queen, Isabella of Bavaria, and several nobles, among them the earl of Salisbury and Philip the Bold, duke of Burgundy, which enabled her to support her family. For Philip—who was rearing her eldest son as his own child—she penned the moral guidebook Le livre des faitz et bonnes moeurs du Saige Roy Charles. This work, while appropriate for its time, did not prove as useful to subsequent generations due to its overt moralizing and intricate style. More popular was her Le livre de paix, which discusses the proper manner in which princes should be educated. The medieval view of society was that, rather than upward mobility, people were born into a particular station, and their duty was to fulfill the duties that particular station required. De Pisan believed in an orderly society and, unlike the vision Italian political philosopher Niccolò Machiavelli would put forth in The Prince a century later, argued that men of power—particularly princes—have an obligation to lead an honest and moral life, support the Catholic Church, and otherwise maintain the status quo. Other long writings include a biography of Charles V published in Paris in 1404 as Le livre des faicts et bonnes meurs du sage roi Charles V.

During her lifetime, de Pisan gained renown throughout Europe and England for her writings in verse, such as the long poem "Le livre des mutations de Fortune," "Le chemin de longue etude," and "Le livre des cent histoires de Troie." Intricate, heavily stylized, and verbose, these longer works were eclipsed in popularity by the many shorter poems, ballads, and rondeaux she penned during her early career, most between 1393 and 1400. Expressing her emotions—particularly the sadness, uncertainty, and desolation she endured after her beloved husband's death—many of de Pisan's shorter works have been republished for successive generations of new readers in the centuries following her death.

In the longer, more broadly focused verses de Pisan wrote during her writing life, she gained in sophistication where she lost in popular appeal. She experimented with literary themes and style, creating multi-layered poems with meanings often obscure to a reader unschooled in the social milieu and intellectual issues of her day. Pisan's prose is not for the general reader; it is stylistically intricate, intellectually challenging, and reflects her wide-ranging knowledge and interests. In contrast, her prose histories, her biography of Charles V, and her political essays have been praised by generations of critics. Among her contemporaries, de Pisan was often compared to the classical authors Virgil, Cicero, and Cato due to her technical ability and the intelligence that is revealed throughout her body of work.

In the eyes of modern feminist scholars, de Pisan is most remembered for her Trésor de la cité des dames, published in 1405 and translated into English by London publisher Wynkyn de Word as The City of Ladies. La cité des dames has preserved for modern readers and historians the life story of a number of women from both history and mythology; for de Pisan's contemporaries it provided women with inspiration. In this work she also examines the source of women's diminished social status and includes advice for readers regarding how to improve education and social standing. Now considered one of the foundational works of feminist literature, the book has served as a source for all those who would argue that women deserved the same right to educational opportunities as men because they were capable of attaining similar accomplishments. For some, her argument that women were socially and intellectually the equals of men was seen as a threat, and efforts—eventually discredited—were made to show that La cité des dames was a plagiarized rewrite of an earlier work by Italian writer Giovanni Boccaccio titled De claris mulieribus.

De Pisan's 1405 work, Le livre du trèsor de la citéde dames —translated as The Treasure of the City of Ladies; or, The Book of Three Virtues —continues her arguments on behalf of the gentler sex. In this work she takes her argument to her own age, laying forth what she sees as three basic classes of women: noble and aristocratic women, women of the court and lesser nobility, and women of the growing merchant and artisan classes. Common women were not included because their lack of basic literacy excluded them from the reading public. It is all women's right, she argues, to obtain schooling sufficient to allow them to use their natural talents to benefit themselves and society, and especially to become educated, sophisticated citizens able to recognize corruption among political figures. In the prologue to Le livre du trèsor de la cité de dames she wrote: "If it were customary to send little girls to school and to teach them the same subjects that are taught to boys, they would learn just as fully and would understand the subtleties of all arts and sciences. Indeed, maybe they would understand them better … for just as women's bodies are softer than men's, so their understanding is sharper."

Other works by de Pisan include Le livre des fais d'armes et de checaleries —translated and printed by William Caxton in London in 1489 as The Book of Fayettes of Armes and of Chivalrye —and 1407's Le livre du duc des vrais amants —translated as The Book of the Duke of True Lovers. Her Lettre à Isabeau de Bavière, a work written in response to a popular satirical parody of the classic Roman de la rose, began her multi-volume attack on the writings of Ovid and Jean de Meun. In her poetic Epistre au dieu d'amour, which she published in 1399, de Pisan expresses her unhappiness over women's lot within Medieval society and argues against the underlying misogynism in popular literary works. She continues such arguments on behalf of women in Epistres du délbat sur le Roman de la rose, which was released to French readers in 1401. In Avision–Christine, which was published in 1405 and later translated as Christine's Vision, she writes that a man once stated to her that educated women were unbecoming because they were so uncommon. Her quick wit is reflected in her response to him: that ignorant men are more offensive; they are even more unbecoming because they are so very common.

Prolific Writer

Because of her need to support herself and her children following her husband's death, de Pisan was a remarkably prolific writer. By the writer's own account, from 1397 to 1403 she competed 15 major works in addition to a number of essays and shorter verses. Her devotion to her craft of writing accounts, perhaps, for the fact that she did not take the path of many women of her era and station and remarry. She arranged for the copying and illuminating of her own texts in copybooks, a project she closely oversaw, and also founded the Order of the Rose.

Throughout much of de Pisan's life her adopted France had drained its economy to pursue an elusive victory against England in a series of battles that became collectively known as the Hundred Years' War. In her prose writings de Pisan often expressed her frustration with politicians and nobles who supported this war, and she grew even more upset after the assassination of Louis of Orleans in 1407, penning Lamentations on the Civil War in response. When, in 1415, English King Henry V at the Battle of Agincourt roundly defeated the French army, she took the setback hard. Three years later, in 1418, she retired to Poissy, entering the same convent her daughter had joined. At Poissy she set aside her pen for 11 years in protest. Her last written work, Ditié de Jehanne d'Arc, was a song inspired by the heroism of young Joan of Arc, who de Pisan viewed as embodying the moral and intellectual virtues of all women. This work, which was published in 1429, was the last de Pisan would write; she died at Poissy two years later, in 1431 at the age of ninety-six.

Books

Feminist Writers, St. James Press, 1996.

Kennedy, Angus, Christine de Pizan: A Bibliographical Guide, Grant & Cutler, 1994.

The Reception of Christine de Pisan from the 15th through the 19th Centuries, edited by Glenda K. McLeod, Edwin Mellen Press, 1991.

Reinterpreting Christine de Pizan, edited by Earl Jeffrey Richards, University of Georgia Press, 1992.

Willard, Charity Cannon, Christine de Pizan: Her Life and Works, Persea Press, 1984.

Periodicals

Review of Metaphysics, September 1996.

Shakespeare Studies, January 1, 1997.