Christine de Pizan and the Moral Defence of Women Reading beyond Gender [Paperback]

The first book-length study of a seminal 'feminist' text from the Middle Ages.Christine de Pizan's Livre de la Cité des Dames (1405) is justly renowned for its full-scale assault on the misogynist stereotypes which dominated the culture of the Middle Ages. Rosalind Brown-Grant locates the Cité in the context of Christine's defence of women as it developed over a number of years and through a range of different texts. This study shows that Christine's case for women nonetheless had an underlying unity in its insistence on the moral, if not the social equality of the sexes.Christine de Pizan's Livre de la Cité des Dames (1405) is justly renowned for its full-scale assault on the misogynist stereotypes which dominated the culture of the Middle Ages. Rosalind Brown-Grant locates the Cité in the context of Christine's defence of women as it developed over a number of years and through a range of different texts. This study shows that Christine's case for women nonetheless had an underlying unity in its insistence on the moral, if not the social equality of the sexes.Christine de Pizan's Livre de la Cité des Dames (1405) is justly renowned for its full-scale assault on the misogynist stereotypes that dominated the culture of the Middle Ages. Rosalind Brown-Grant locates the Cité in the context of Christine's defense of women as it developed over a number of years and through a range of different texts. This study shows that Christine's case for women nonetheless had an underlying unity in its insistence on the moral, if not the social, equality of the sexes.Introduction; 1. The 'querelle de la Rose': Christine's critique of misogynist doctrine and literary practice; 2. The Epistre Oth?a: an ethical and allegorical alternative to the Roman de la Rose?; 3. The Avision-Christine: a female exemplar for the princely reader; 4. The Livre de la Cit?s Dames: generic transformation and the moral defence of women; 5. The Livre dlb