Translation of Christine's autobiographical "Vision", both dealing with her own life and career, and offering a possible solution to the troubled state of France at the time.
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.
Christine de Pizan was born in Venice and raised in Paris at the court of Charles V of France. Widowed at the age of twenty-five, she turned to writing as a source of comfort and income, and went on to produce a remarkable series of books, including poetry, politics, chivalry, warfare, religion and philosophy. She is considered to be France's first female professional writer. This was the first translation into modern English of Christine de Pizan's major political work, The Book of the Body Politic. Written during the Hundred Years' War, it discusses the education and behaviour appropriate for princes, nobility and common people, so that all classes can understand their responsibilities towards society as a whole. A product of a time of civil unrest, The Book of the Body Politic offers a medieval political theory of interdependence and social responsibility from the perspective of an educated woman.
Translation of Christine's autobiographical "Vision", both dealing with her own life and career, and offering a possible solution to the troubled state of France at the time.
An English translation of The Book of Peace, written between 1412 and 1414 by Christine de Pizan, one of the earliest known women authors. Translated material is side by side with the original French text"--Provided by publisher.
Fresh, accurate, and engaging, this new translation of the Book of the City of Ladies helps us to understand what made Christine de Pizan so popular with her fifteenth-century contemporaries. The editors provide a rich historical and philosophical context that will be very useful to both students and scholars of the history of political ideas. The translations themselves gracefully navigate the fine line between accuracy and readability with considerable charm. Rounding out this portrait of the turmoil of fifteenth-century France, the volume is enriched by excerpts from other works, Christine's Vision, the Book of the Body Politic, and the Lamentation on France’s Ills." —Kate Forhan, Emeritus, Siena College CONTENTS:IntroductionA Note on Translating the Book of the City of LadiesChristine de Pizan: Her works, Her TimesSuggestions for Further ReadingFrom Christine's Vision (1405)The Book of the City of Ladies (1404–1405)From The Book of the Body Politic (1404–1407)From Lamentation on France's Ills (1410)Index
Christine de Pizan's Epistre Au Dieu D'Amours and Dit de la Rose, Thomas Hoccleve's The Letter of Cupid ; Editions and Translations with George Sewell's The Proclamation of Cupid
Christine de Pizan's Epistre Au Dieu D'Amours and Dit de la Rose, Thomas Hoccleve's The Letter of Cupid ; Editions and Translations with George Sewell's The Proclamation of Cupid
The lightheartedness of these works both masks and enhances their engagement with provocative issues of continuing interest today: conduct in society, literary practice and moral praxis, relations between men and women, the value of received wisdom. This volume offers texts of two medieval French poems by Christine de Pizan: the "Epistre au dieu d'amours" and "Dit de la Rose," together with the first translation of these poems into modern English. The medieval English adaptation of Christine's "Epistre," Thomas Hoccleve's "The Letter of Cupid," is likewise presented here, and provided with a modern English translation. Finally, an eighteenth-century version of Hoccleve's poem, George Sewell's "The Proclamation of Cupid," is edited here for the first time. The editions of these poems by Christine, last edited a century ago, are based on the most recent scholarly findings. The edition of Hoccleve's poem reproduces its authorial punctuation from manuscript for the first time, and thus sheds light on the vexed question of fifteenth- century English metrics. The lively modern English translations of both can be used by students, scholars, and the general reader.
Altmann is making a major contribution by providing this much-needed text of Christine's significant but inadequately known debate poems, together with essential philological, codicological, and historical background, annotations, together with a landmark literary-critical preface."--Nadia Margolis, editor, The Christine de Pizan Society Newsletter This new edition of Christine de Pizan's love debate poems supercedes the only other modern edition (1886) by working from all existing fifteenth century versions and by using as a base manuscript the version now generally acknowledged as the definitive copy. The poems, Livre du Debat de deux amans, the Livre des Trois jugemens, and the Livre du Dit de Poissy are spirited discussions, of approximately 2000 lines, concerning the finer points of late-medieval love doctrine and protocol. Written early in the fifteenth century, they are significant both because of their contribution to the tradition of debates and dits by such authors as Guillaume de Machaut, Jean Froissart, and Alain Chartier, and because their author is arguably the most important female writer in the west before Austen. Alongside the texts, Altmann provides the first extended study of these debates in their own right, offering a literary historical background to the form, analyzing Christine's use of the traditional form and content of the love debate, and providing sections on the codicology and philology of the poems. She also provides an introduction, summary, and textual notes for each of the poems as well as a glossary for nonspecialist readers. Barbara K. Altmann is associate professor of French at the University of Oregon and author of articles on French medieval verse in French Studies and elsewhere.
Originally published in 1993, this book offers a translation of Christine de Pizan's Christine's Vision, as translated by Glenda K. McLeod. One of France's first professionl writers, Christine de Pizan wrote a large and remarkable body of work, distinguished not only for its variety and quality but also for its unusual blend of introspective and public commentary. As Christine's Vision makes clear, Christine sensed the similarities between her fate and France's and felt a close bond with her adopted land.
In 1401, Christine de Pizan (1365–1430?), 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. Pizan’s 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 “Romance of the Rose,” David Hult collects, along with the debate documents themselves, letters, sermons, and excerpts from other works of Pizan, including one from City of Ladies—her major defense of women and their rights—that give context to this debate. Here, Pizan’s supporters and detractors are heard alongside her own formidable, protofeminist voice. 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.
Christine de Pizan (c.1364-1430) was France's first professional woman of letters. Her pioneering Book of the City of Ladies begins when, feeling frustrated and miserable after reading a male writer's tirade against women, Christine 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 CITY OF LADIES provides positive images of women, ranging from warriors and inventors, scholars to prophetesses, and artists to saints. The book also offers a fascinating insight into the debates and controversies about the position of women in medieval culture.
Written by Europe’s first professional woman writer, The Treasure of the City of Ladies offers advice and guidance to women of all ages and from all levels of medieval society, from royal courtiers to prostitutes. It paints an intricate picture of daily life in the courts and streets of fifteenth-century France and gives a fascinating glimpse into the practical considerations of running a household, dressing appropriately and maintaining a reputation in all circumstances. Christine de Pizan’s book provides a valuable counterbalance to male accounts of life in the middle ages and demonstrates, often with dry humour, how a woman’s position in society could be made less precarious by following the correct etiquette.
This book evaluates the major debates around which the discipline of international relations has developed in the light of contemporary feminist theories.
Originally published in 1984, the three epistolary works of Christine de Pizan, alongside their translation. They are all personal documents from a woman who gave spiritual advice as well as an insight into the real workings of her society.
Alliterative Revivals is the first full-length study of the sophisticated historical consciousness of late medieval alliterative romance. Drawing from historicism, feminism, performance studies, and postcolonial theory, Christine Chism argues that these poems animate British history by reviving and acknowledging potentially threatening figures from the medieval past—pagan judges, primeval giants, Greek knights, Jewish forefathers, Egyptian sorcerers, and dead ancestors. In addressing the ways alliterative poems centralize history—the dangerous but profitable commerce of the present with the past—Chism's book shifts the emphasis from the philological questions that have preoccupied studies of alliterative romance and offers a new argument about the uses of alliterative poetry, how it appealed to its original producers and audiences, and why it deserves attention now. Alliterative Revivals examines eight poems: St. Erkenwald, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, The Wars of Alexander, The Siege of Jerusalem, the alliterative Morte Arthure, De Tribus Regibus Mortuis, The Awntyrs off Arthure, and Somer Sunday. Chism both historicizes these texts and argues that they are themselves obsessed with history, dramatizing encounters between the ancient past and the medieval present as a way for fourteenth-century contemporaries to examine and rethink a range of ideologies. These poems project contemporary conflicts into vivid, vast, and spectacular historical theaters in order to reimagine the complex relations between monarchy and nobility, ecclesiastical authority and lay piety, courtly and provincial culture, western Christendom and its easterly others, and the living and their dead progenitors. In this, alliterative romance joins hands with other late fourteenth-century literary texts that make trouble at the borders of aristocratic culture.
Stewart-Nuñez draws upon a number of styles—persona, ekphrastic, lyrical, formal—to create a collection that explores the promises of love and loss. Among Untrussed’s many delights is a series of Wonder Woman poems that reveal a heroine who is as human as she is superhuman. From pleasure to pain to hope of new love, this collection draws readers into the everyday magic of the world.
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