From relative anonymity to proto-feminist icon to pop culture touchstone, Christine de Pizan has fulfilled myriad assumptions about the medieval woman writer. In this second volume in the series of Medieval Lives (the first was Margery Kempe), Charlotte Cooper-Davis provides balanced and succinct accounts of the cultural contexts that led to the poet’s evolving reputation. As the book jacket claims, “this new biography [is] the first written for a general audience.” Conveying the intricacies of late medieval French literary court culture and the complex political environment in which Christine lived and wrote is not an easy task. Cooper-Davis succeeds admirably in providing a balance between sufficient and overwhelming historical information--enough for an interested reader to understand Christine’s milieu, but not so much as to overwhelm the non-specialist. The volume includes four chapters, an Introduction, and a brief Conclusion, and is handsomely illustrated.
The Introduction combines biographical information about Christine with an overview of her profound understanding of how, ideally, the relationship between writer and patron could work to mutual advantage. That is, as developed in later chapters, the idea that Christine did not simply sit down at her desk one day and start to compose. She had a larger vision of the audience and the physical form in which her work should be disseminated. She experienced both happiness and setbacks in her personal life that led her to understand how the vicissitudes of Fortune affected women in particular: “having clung to the spokes of Fortune’s wheel,” Cooper-Davis writes, “Christine de Pizan was reborn as a professional writer” (13). At first, she composed conventional lyric poetry. Even in these early works, however, she displayed concern about how easily women could be defamed by men. She was also deeply interested in political philosophy and good (or bad) governance, living as she did during an era of mortal feuds among French nobility, and the recurring inroads of the Hundred Years War. Indeed, her last work, the Ditié de Jeanne d’Arc, is an outpouring of hope and a vindication of the Valois ascendency. Her vision, Cooper-Davis argues, encompassed “her cultural past, present and future,” (20) to each of which the following chapters are devoted.
The cultural past is treated in Chapter 1: “A Visit to Christine de Pizan’s Paris.” After her Italian family emigrated to Paris when Christine was a young child, she enjoyed the privileges of court life in a time of peace and hope under the leadership of Charles V, “The Wise.” Here, Cooper-Davis widens her scope to talk about Paris as a prominent city, a place where the nobility constructed buildings of both beauty and utility, many of which still stand. It was also a city of “learning and great wisdom” (39). King Charles V evinced his dedication to these enterprises by founding a grand royal library, one of the achievements Christine praises in her Fais et bonnes meurs of the king. Cooper-Davis does not linger on the contents of the library; rather, she provides a full and instructive account of book collecting, manuscript production, and patronage. Sadly, the succession of the minor child Charles VI in 1380, and his subsequent periods of mental illness, led to an internal war among powerful men vying for influence. During this time, Christine composed several texts, notably Le Livre de l’avision Christine, reflecting her disquiet at what was in effect a civil war, and urging peace. She counted among her patrons adherents of both sides, Burgundy and Orléans, although her sympathies lay with the house of Orléans. However, “it was paramount for her to remain neutral, or, at the very least, to give the impression of being so” (48). Thus, for example, Christine skillfully limits her praise of Philip of Burgundy in the Fais et bonnes meurs to his ducal, not his regental duties. Furthermore, in both Le Livre du chemin de long estude and L’Epistre Othea, Christine uses classical tropes to praise qualities she admired in Louis d’Orléans. Eventually, precipitated by the Burgundian massacre of 1418, Christine left her beloved Paris. One fortunate effect of the English occupation of Paris after the establishment of a dual monarchy after the Treaty of Troyes in 1420 was the regent Duke of Bedford’s acquisition of many manuscripts from the royal library, including Christine’s “Queen’s Manuscript” (BL Harley 4431), a collection of her works presented to Queen Isabeau. (The British Library has recently uploaded this manuscript to its Digitised Manuscripts collection.)
The “Book of the Queen” is extensively and beautifully illuminated, a reflection of “Christine’s Artistic Vision,” the subject of Chapter 2. This chapter expands upon the “cultural present” of Christine’s work, describing the physical elements that went into manuscript production, from parchment, to ink, to copying, to illumination, to binding. In the early fifteenth century, this enterprise was becoming a commercial, collaborative, and often family-based undertaking. At the same time, the tumultuous war climate created material shortages, as in the poor quality of parchment used for Queen’s Book. These upheavals affected Christine’s own publication, from a high of 9 manuscripts each in 1405 and 1406, dropping to only one over the next two years, slightly increasing in 1410, but totaling only three known manuscripts for the rest of her life. Even so, she was closely involved in seeing her works come to fruition, mentioning them in her own writings, as well as penning (and even amending) some of them herself. Cooper-Davis argues for Christine’s role as an “entrepreneur” who “sought out individual, skilled artists” (71) such as Anastaise, whom she mentions in Le Livre de la cite des dames, and the so-called City of Ladies Master, who created the iconic image of Christine in her white wimple and blue gown.
In Chapter 3, “Christine Stems the Fountain of Misogyny,” Cooper-Davis situates Christine in the ongoing debates about women. She based her work on those who came before yet engaged with their misogyny. In the Cité des dames, for example, she is deeply indebted to Boccaccio’s De mulieribus. However, she edits his critiques of some women, and “sometimes celebrates the achievements of women to the point of bypassing their obvious flaws” (93). She rejects his and others’ refutation of education and learning in women while maintaining that men and women are indeed different. Similarly, she vigorously engaged in debates on the Roman de la rose not only for its language and anti-feminism, but also for some of its illogic in her Dit de la rose and L’Epistre au dieu d’amours.
“Christine’s Legacy in Early Modern and Modern Culture,” Chapter 4, traces the fate of Christine’s work after the invention of printing, and the erasure of attribution in some of them. Cooper-Davis also outlines some of the critical debates surrounding whether or not Christine was a “feminist,” in the modern sense of the word. Here, the author responds directly to Sheila Delany’s Marxist critique of Christine, demonstrating that we still have much work to do in parsing the subtleties of a poet’s voice over a span of nearly 700 years. The remainder of this fascinating chapter focuses on artistic depictions of Christine in video games, murals, paintings, Judy Chicago’s installation “The Dinner Party,” and Penelope Haralambidou’s 2020 exhibit at the Domobaal gallery in London. Cooper-Davis’s brief “Conclusion” notes that for good or bad, Christine de Pizan now holds a place in the anglophone cultural mainstream.
Christine de Pizan: Life, Work, Legacy provides interesting and useful background information for non-specialist readers, including undergraduates. I could see all or part of it used as supplemental reading in courses focused on women’s studies, material culture, and late medieval France.