Reference Publications

Christine de Pizan 2000: Studies on Christine de Pizan in Honour of Angus J. Kennedy

Medium Aevum, Fall, 2002 by Adrian Armstrong

ed. John Campbell and Nadia Margolis, Faux Titre 196 (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2000). 429 pp. ISBN 90-420-1244-7. $72.00.

The latest in a sequence of excellent collections on Christine, this volume contains much to interest scholars of late-medieval literature in general. It reveals both the multiple ramifications of Christine's output, and the methodological diversity flourishing in Middle French studies. Nadia Margolis's introduction sketches the reception of Christine's work through the centuries, making in passing some stimulating reflections on the discipline of medieval studies. Individual contributions fall into four sections, addressing language and style; thematic issues; milieux; and sources and reception. While the precise textual analyses in the first section are perhaps especially illuminating, all areas attract significant and exciting studies; those cited here must suffice to indicate their variety. Rosalind Brown-Grant's rigorous, astute account of Christine's attitudes towards gendered language employs an approach which could profitably be taken towards later texts of the querelle des femmes. Peter Davies devotes a dense, perceptive study to enjambement, and Jane Taylor offers detailed and persuasive readings of two lyrics; both these pieces draw attention to textual subtleties often overlooked in the face of the sheer volume of Christine's production. Gilbert Ouy and Christine Reno blend codicology and historical reconstruction to produce a thorough and convincing image of the genesis and gestation of the Chemin de long estude, while Earl Jeffrey Richards usefully develops existing findings on Christine's relationship with Gerson. James Laidlaw sheds a fascinating light upon Maurice Roy's editing work, and upon the history of the discipline. Intertextual echoes attract deft accounts by Margolis (on the varied resonances of Autres Balades 42) and Lori Walters (on Christine's mediated engagement with Petrarch, and the differing ends to which this engagement was put). One often wishes for more, notably with Andrea Tarnowski's powerful totalizing reading of the Advision, and Eric Hicks's valuable survey of sources for the Fais et bonnes meurs. Thelma Fenster, in discussing Christine's reception of Chretien's Erec et Enide, depends rather too much upon conjecture, but supplies intriguing conclusions regarding a didactic standpoint too easily dismissed without genuine analysis. Bernard Ribemont's account of motherhood in Christine's work, while lacking depth on the ideological implications of motherhood, fruitfully points out some of the inconsistencies in the image of mother as educator. The volume is generally well produced, though some typos have survived, and two pages of notes lack note numbers. The use of endnotes which themselves contain author-date references is rather unwieldy, the more so since the bibliography does not observe date order in listing individual authors' works. That said, all contributions are eminently accessible to medievalists without specialist knowledge of Christine's work. In its clarity and comprehensiveness, as well as in the collegiality which shines through the studies, this volume constitutes a homage in the very image of Angus Kennedy.