Christine de Pizan: A Casebook

Medium Aevum, Spring, 2005 by Leslie C. Brook

Christine de Pizan: A Casebook, ed. Barbara K. Altmann and Deborah L. McGrady, Routledge Medieval Casebooks (New York and London: Routledge, 2003). xiii 296 pp. ISBN 0-415-93909-7. 65.00 [pounds sterling].

The fifteen essays in this volume aim collectively to provide an overview of the present state of Christine studies and point the way for further work. The first four explore how Christine engaged with the historical and cultural issues of her day. Renate Blumenfeld-Kosinski traces the development throughout her writings of her reaction to the wars against England, the Great Schism, and civil strife. Lori J. Wakers points to Christine's awareness that her name derives from Christ, and that this bestowed upon her a sacred mission to be the interpretative, vernacular voice to the monarchy of God's will. Earl Jeffrey Richards argues that her theological knowledge was far from superficial, and that she engaged with Thomist theology in order to advance the status of women. Margarete Zimmermann examines the strategies Christine employed to inscribe herself into the memory of her contemporaries and future generations. On feminist issues, Rosalind Brown Grant traces Christine's thoughts on the ways in which women are personally and socially complementary to men, and should in fact be seen as an estate necessary to the body politic. Roberta L. Krueger looks at the economic and financial advice given to women in the Trois vertus, in which good economic management and moral and social self-improvement are seen as interlinked. Thelma Fenster finds that Christine prefers the exemplar to the heroine, and puts herself into her writings through the portrayal of the Sibyl. Analysing the Cite des dames, Judith L. Kellogg shows that Christine metaphorically reconfigures knowledge, rescuing it from misogyny and male dominance in the reconstruction of the city, while imparting to women a sense of awareness and confidence to live in the real world. On other themes Tracy Adams analyses the lyric cycles, tracing a link between the dependence of love upon Fortune in them and the dependence of France upon the fickleness of the controlling nobility the only defence in either case is the cultivation of personal goodness and honour. Marilynn Desmond considers that Christine's principal concern in her letters in the Querelle du Roman de la Rose is with the adverse effect that the Rose could have on husbands, who might be encouraged by it to maltreat their wives. Andrea Tarnowski sees the Chemin de long estude as intermediary in Christine's growth towards asserting her own authority as a writer, and argues that the work favours solutions to issues of the day based on knowledge and experience. Liliane Dulac and Christine Reno conclude that the Advision Cristine is an inextricable mixture of an autobiographical and political work. Maureen Boulton considers Christine's religious writings in the context of contemporary devotional practices and vernacular religious literature, looking at them especially as expressions of affective and meditative pleaT. Finally, James Laidlaw surveys and lists the presentation copies of Christine's works produced in her 'scriptorium' between 1399 and 1418, while Nadia Margolis reviews the history of editions of Christine's writings. These are all good, stimulating essays, adding a worthwhile volume to what Margolis terms the recent 'Christine boom'.

LESLIE C. BROOK

Birmingham