Reference Publications

Christine de Pizan; Epistre Othea

Medium Aevum, Spring, 2001 by Angus J. Kennedy

Christine de Pizan; Epistre Othea, ed. Gabriella Parussa, Textes litteraires francais 517 (Geneva: Droz, 1999). 541 pp. ISBN 2-600-00376-2. F. Fr. 66.00.

The Epistre Othea is a work of moral instruction, in verse and prose, that has clear generic links with courtesy books, manuals of chivalry, and mirrors for princes. Composed c.1400, it takes the form of a letter written by Othea (who symbolizes prudence) to the Trojan hero Hector. Othea's letter is divided up into 100 chapters, each consisting of a miniature and a verse texte recounting a story from classical mythology, a prose glose designed to expound the moral significance of the story, and a prose allegorie expounding its underlying spiritual/Christian interpretation. Although the text was immensely popular in its own day and into the sixteenth century (it survives in almost fifty manuscripts, four black-letter French editions printed between 1500 and 1534, and three Middle English translations by Anthony Babyngton, Stephen Scrope, and Robert Wyer), its subsequent fortunes have been very varied. Paradoxically, after a period of total neglect, it has in the modern period been more easily available to the English-speaking world, in modern editions of the Middle English text by Warner (1904), Gordon (1942), and Buhler (1970), and in the Modern English translation of the French text by Chance (1990). By contrast, it was not till 1977 that the original Middle French text was transcribed by Loukopoulos for her Wayne State University doctoral dissertation, which of course is not of easy access. Gabriella Parussa, therefore, has put late medieval specialists of all disciplines in her debt by publishing this critical edition of one of Christine's major but much-neglected texts. The substantial introduction (pp. 1-193), whilst acknowledging debts to previous scholarship on the text (notably by Campbell, Mombello, Buhler, and Hindman), refreshingly takes nothing for granted and subjects all previous claims and judgements to the most searching scrutiny. As well as giving us a probing reassessment of the sources and a meticulous analysis of language, the introduction discusses the author and her work, the iconographical programme, the manuscripts (the edition is based on BL, MS Harley 4431, with variants from BN, MSS f. fr. 606, f. fr. 848, and Chantilly, MS Conde 492), punctuation, and the establishment of the text. The text is followed by variants, notes (characterized by exemplary precision), a glossary, a table of proper names, appendices that print the various prologues to patrons, and a substantial bibliography (pp. 517-39). The text itself has been carefully transcribed, to judge by my checking samples of the transcription against Harley 4431, fols 95d-97b, 118c-119a, 140a-141c. The only observations I have concern points that do not interfere with comprehension (e.g. glose 1, line 108: there is no `a' after `ensuivre'; in the prologue to 2, lines 4-5, the manuscript reading (in this order) is `orge' and `orloge'; it is not clear whether some corrected readings (e.g. `creees', p. 201, lines 125, 128) are based on variants or editorial intervention; `plusieurs personne' as an accusative plural, allegorie 51, line 24, deserves a note). Finally, there are a number of typographical slips (e.g. p. 10, line 19; p. 14, line 4 of note 25, read Johns; p. 23, line 15 ...). That said, this is a piece of work that deserves unqualified praise.