Christine de Pizan is perhaps the most famous female author from the medieval period. She lived in France (although she was born in Italy) and wrote much of her work in the early decades of the 15th century. Pizan was a professional writer and her written work encompassed a huge variety of subjects from chivalry and arms to political discourse to poetry, history, and philosophy. She is best known for The Book of the City of Ladies and The Book of the Three Virtues (The Treasure of the City of Ladies) which have often been referred to as the first works of feminist thought.
Our class will focus on Pizan as an example of female authorial voices in the Middle Ages. Pizan was not alone. There were many other female authors who were active in this period and we’ll explore others as examples. But Pizan wrote a such a variety of topics in comparison to other female authors because she was commissioned to do so by different patrons. Our exploration will therefore consider Pizan’s place as a professional writer and her commentary on the experiences of women as she saw them.
To Watch (online students)
To Read
“Christine to Jean de Montreuil, Provost of Lille”
Selections of The Book of the City of Ladies
Selections of The Book of the Three Virtues
All available:
To Do
Our readings today come from the voice of Christine de Pizan and include a letter she wrote as well as excerpts from two larger works: The Book of the City of Ladies and The Book of the Three Virtues. This is a small section of the huge number of works that Pizan wrote as a professional author. You can see a full list of her works here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christine_de_Pizan
In person students
For those signed up to lead discussion for this class, you are in charge of developing discussion questions. You can also create activities for the class to engage in as a means of exploring the assigned readings.
Online students
Questions will be posted in your chatboard channels as a means of starting discussion about the assigned readings. Students who are signed up to lead the online discussion are responsible for monitoring your classmates’ comments and responding to them to keep discussion going. If there are questions that arise which I can help with, don’t forget to tag me @dwl.
Online posts are due Sunday June 12th at midnight.