Les Epistres familieres et invectives

Modern Language Review, The, Oct, 1999 by Rosalind Brown-Grant

Les Epistres familieres et invectives. By HELISENNE DE CRENNE. Ed. by JERRY C. NASH. (Textes de la Renaissance, 8) Paris: Champion. 1996. 232 pp.

Le Livre du corps de policie. By CHRISTINE DE PIZAN. Ed. by ANGUS J. KENNEDY. (Etudes christiennes, 1) Paris: Champion. 1998. xlii 231 pp.

The 'Querelle des femmes', the long-standing debate about women's right to participate in cultural and intellectual life that occupied an important place on the French literary scene between 1400-1800, has become a subject of intense interest to modern scholars in recent years, especially Anglo-American feminist critics. The role played by women writers themselves in the 'Querelle des femmes' has received particular attention from such scholars, yet has remained largely neglected by French publishing-houses, who tend to devote their 'Pleiade' or equivalent series to male authors who are deemed to be more serious and more widely known than their female counterparts. Whilst the complete works of a Montaigne or a Rousseau have been endlessly re-edited, those of an Helisenne de Crenne (the pseudonym of Marguerite Briet) or a Christine de Pizan have yet to receive the same treatment. Fortunately, however, Champion have now realized that there is an urgent need for good critical editions of texts by such women writers, and have issued these two volumes.

Each work occupies an important place in the 'Querelle des femmes', if for rather different reasons. Helisenne's sixteenth-century text is a collection of fictional epistles written by the eponymous narrator. In her 'familiar' (private) correspondence, she offers consolatory moral advice to various addressees on issues such as the dangers of illicit love or the loss of a beloved spouse, emphasizing throughout the need for good relations between the sexes and women's potential to act like rational beings. In her 'invective' letters, Helisenne defends both herself and the rest of womankind against the misogynist slanders hurled at her by her jealous husband, who has accused her of adultery, and by a friend of his, who has derided her literary efforts. Jerry Nash's text, the first modern French edition of the Epistres familieres et invectives, is based on the version first published in 1539 by Denys Janot and uses as a control the later versions dating from 1550, whose spelling and punctuation were corrected by Claude Colet with Helisenne's permission. Christine's late-medieval 'mirror for princes', on the other hand, is less directly concerned with defending women than her famous catalogue of heroines, the Livre de la Cite des Dames (1405). Yet it none the less reveals the female author's self-confidence in presenting herself as a counsellor to the dauphin, whom she advises on the need for good government in the French state at a time of crisis. Angus J. Kennedy's entirely new edition of the Livre du corps de policie based on Chantilly 294, a manuscript that has been definitively identified as an autograph dating from 1406-7, now replaces Lucas's rather unsatisfactory edition of 1967, which was transcribed from a version of the text produced long after Christine's own lifetime.

Both texts are accompanied by a full scholarly apparatus of introduction, notes, list of textual variants, glossary, selected bibliography, and index of proper names. Of the two editions, Kennedy's is more user-friendly for the general reader as well as providing more thought-provoking analysis for the specialist. In his introduction, Kennedy clearly situates Christine in her historical and literary context as he outlines the complex political background to her composition of the text and examines her working practices as author/compiler. Whilst Kennedy emphasizes Christine's dependence on her main source, Valerius Maximus's Facta et dicta memorabilia, which she read through the translation and commentaries of Simon de Hesdin and Nicolas de Gonesse produced between 1375 and 1401, he none the less shows how she transformed this material to suit her own political agenda. Kennedy's glossary is equally comprehensive, offering invaluable assistance to readers who might be confronting Christine's often tortuous syntax for the first time.

By contrast, Nash's introduction to Helisenne's work is far less accessible to the neophyte in terms of providing a clear intellectual context. Much more could have been said, for example, on the genre of epistolary writing in the Renaissance, such as the models that were available to Helisenne, the role of her implied reader, and the actual reception of her text. Further detail about the nature and scope of feminist ideas in the period would also have been desirable. Moreover, Nash's distinction between the authorial persona of the work whom he refers to as 'Crenne' (in line with designating male authors of the period by their surname) and the narratorial persona of 'Helisenne' would not seem to be borne out by the writer's own practice, since she appears to use the terms indifferently in her epistles. (Similarly, most Christine scholars tend to follow the author's own use of her first name rather than insist on referring to her as 'Pizan'.) Given that Helisenne seems also to have followed Christine in attempting to give her language added prestige by latinizing her syntax and spelling, a fuller glossary would have been useful.