Contexts and Continuities: Proceedings of the IVth International Colloquium on Christine de Pizan Published in Honour of Liliane Dulac

Medium Aevum, Spring, 2004 by Emma J. Cayley

Contexts and Continuities: Proceedings of the IVth International Colloquium on Christine de Pizan (Glasgow 21-27 July 2000) Published in Honour of Liliane Dulac, ed. Angus J. Kennedy with Rosalind Brown-Grant, James C. Laidlaw, and Catherine M. Muller (Glasgow: Glasgow University Press, 2002). 3 vols: xiv 314 pp., 305 pp., 309 pp.; 51 illustrations. ISBN 0-8526-1743-7; 0-8526-1744-5; 0-8526-1745-3. 55.00 [pounds sterling]/91.00 [euro]/$78.00.

The fourth International Colloquium on Christine de Pizan, held at Glasgow in July 2000, appears here in the form of sixty-two articles divided between three volumes, and arranged in alphabetical order. The first volume begins with a tribute to Liliane Dulac, of the University of Montpellier, to whom the proceedings are dedicated; a highly respected Christine scholar and co-editor with Bernard Ribemont of the collection entitled Une femme de lettres au Moyen Age: etudes autour de Christine de Pizan (Orleans, 1995), and with Christine Reno of L'Advision Cristine (Paris, 2001).

The sheer number of papers collected here, as the editors point out, fulfils Christine's prediction from the Advision adopted as the devise of the conference that 'Le temps a venir, plus en sera parle que a ton vivant'. A lot is indeed said here, and several of these papers stand out for their originality. The alphabetical order occasionally lets down the collection, as in the first volume where one feels that Barbara Altmann's insightful paper might have been better placed first. Fortunately though, Altmann's surname guarantees her at least second place where she astutely sets out a new agenda for Christine studies. Altmann suggests that Christine de Pizan, like her stuffed image, at one time on display at the British Library, might yet be repositioned in front of a number of backdrops and so escape the reductive 'feminist' labelling to which she and her works have been subject. Still, 'every critic sees her primary material through a particular set of filters', as Altmann remarks, and this collection rehearses Christine scenery in traditional as well as innovative ways, but also introduces some exciting new backdrops. Rosalind Brown-Grant's paper in the first volume takes up the pro-feminine cause from a particularly subtle angle, discussing Christine's use of linguistic strategies such as feminization and genericization in her defence of women. In the second volume, Thelma Fenster re-examines the central paradox of feminism which lies in the notion of sexual difference, referring to Augustinian models adapted by Christine. Margarete Zimmermann closes the collection with a paper on memoria 'au feminin', consciously referring us back to Altmann's (almost) liminal image of Christine as a product of the popular cultural memory. Here Zimmermann identifies a 'nouvel imaginaire au feminin' in Christine's works which reveals a lost memory of womankind.

New light is shed on Christine's often neglected lyrics with a detailed codicological study of the lays by James C. Laidlaw and a nuanced interpretation of the function of the envoi in Christine's lyrics by Jane H. M. Taylor. Jean-Claude Muhlethaler contributes a dynamic re-evaluation of Christine's political writings in the context of the influential miroirs des princes, highlighting the importance of a politics of practice for Christine. In addition to this rehabilitation of Christine's lesser-known works, brief mention should also be made of the new contexts in which Christine's works are evaluated in Catherine M. Muller's informative piece on lyrics written by women from within the court of Marguerite d'Ecosse, and in Elisabeth Schreiner's study of Spanish philogynic texts in the fifteenth century.

This is above all a wide-ranging collection which yields some original and suggestive insights.

EMMA J. CAYLEY

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