Building the ideal city: Female memorial praxis in Christine de Pizan's Cite des Dames

Serving as agent images, these exempla provide active, emotional imagery to impress their places in the system and in the reader's mind. The first of these exempla is Hypiscrata, who is so loyal to her husband that she follows him into battle disguised as a man. Detailed descriptions of her physical transformation from a beautiful and sensual queen to a woman disguised as a warrior provide vivid imagery for the reader: "Et en tel maniere se gouvernoit, celle noble dame par force de grant et loyal amour que le tendrete de son biau corps, jeune et delie et souef nourry, estoit con- verti si comme en un tres fort et viguereux chevalier arme" (822; "Thanks to the force of her strong and loyal love, this noble lady conducted herself so valiantly that her fair and soft body, so young, delicate, and tenderly nourished, was transformed, as it were, into a powerful and vigorous armed knight"; 121).

Multiple exempla follow, providing highly visual demonstrations of the loyalty and faithfulness of wives toward their husbands. Among them are Artemisia, who, distraught over her husband's death, drinks his ashes in order to embody his sepulcher, and Argia, who elaborately embraces and kisses the decomposing, infested corpse of her husband. Perhaps the most striking image-as Christine herself points out-is the death of Portia. After a failed attempt to warn her husband Brutus not to go to his meet- ing with Caesar, she commits suicide by eating fiery coals, thus burning herself to death from the inside out. Next, to demonstrate the chastity of women and negate anti-feminist claims that women enjoy and encourage rape, Droitture provides multiple exempla of women who fend off or destroy their attackers. She concludes this series of exempla with the women of Lombardy, who place raw chicken meat on their breasts in order to avoid being raped by their enemies; the meat quickly rots in the heat and, when the would-be attackers smell it, they leave, declaring Dieux, que ces Lombardes puent (890; "God, how these Lombards stink"; 164). all of the exempla in this section are marked by similarly visceral imagery, rein- forcing their import and places in the system.

In contrast to such positive exempla, Droitture also provides agent images that demonstrate the consequences of acting without prudence. She relates a number of exempla on the topic of female constancy. However, these range from stories of women who demonstrate proper constancy-such as Leaena, who bites off her tongue rather than break silence under tortures-to those of women who are victims of foolish, if constant, love. Typically in the debate tradition, the pro-feminist side depicts the latter as women who are morally good despite, or because of, their lovers' betrayal and their own victimization. However, Christine dif- fers from such previous depictions in presenting an ethical argument against such unthinking adherence to constancy; instead, she uses her exempla to illustrate that even a seeming virtue such as constancy can be as damaging as its opposing vice if taken too far. For instance, Droitture tells the story of Lisabetta, who hides her murdered lover's head in a basil pot and waters it with her tears, and Ghismonda, who, given her lover's heart in a goblet, adds poison and commits suicide by drinking the concoction. Droitture concludes "qu trop on ame de grant amour sans varier" (951; "that they loved too much, too deeply and too constantly"; 202). Here, constancy in and of itself is not virtuous; rather, the prudent governance of constancy is the ideal. Finally, Droitture proclaims that such imprudent constancy always leads to an imprudent conclusion-"car toujours en est la fin mauvaise a leur grant prejudice et grief en corps, en bien et en honneur et a l'ame, qui plus est" (952; "for its end is always detrimental and harmful to their bodies, their property, their honor and-most important of all-to their souls"; 202).