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Building the ideal city: Female memorial praxis in Christine de Pizan's Cite des Dames
Studies in the Literary Imagination, Spring 2003 by McCormick, Betsy
This first locus is characteristic of those that follow: each "stone" is one of a series of similarly constructed exempla that serve both as components of Christine's pro-feminist revision and as the building blocks of the architectural mnemonic. Since the loci of Book I form the foundation of the City of Ladies, they logically correspond to the building blocks of civilization, beginning with illustrations of women's physical strength and determination as rulers and warriors. Many of these exempla are also filled with vivid and bizarre images in order to solidify their places in the series of loci in the reader's mind. The exemplum of Semiramis is immediately followed by the exemplum of the women of Scythia, who establish a new nation composed entirely of women. They become known as the Amazons, whom Raison defines as desmamellees (682; "breastless ones"; 41) because each woman removes one of her breasts to better use a bow and arrow and thus enhance her skills as a warrior. Most of the images used throughout this section are bloody and violent, depicting battles and warfare; for example, Thamiris is a Queen of the Amazons who throws the severed head of her enemy, Cyrus of Persia, into a bucket filled with his men's blood. Another visual trait that marks this series of loci is the statue motif; in fact, just as Raison begins building the city's foundation with the statue of Semiramis, she concludes the construction of the foundation with the exemplum of Cloelia and its accompanying statue. One of a group of Roman virgins held hostage, Cloelia cleverly deceives her guards and escapes, bringing along the other hostages. Although she has never ridden, when Cloelia sees a horse, she immediately captures it, using the horse to ferry the other hostages across a river, one by one. A statue depicting Cloelia on her horse is built "a celle fin que de ce fait fust memoire a tousjours mais" (720; "in permanent memory of this deed"; 62). In the story, the statue serves as a marker along the road for the Romans, but here the statue serves as a marker for this last brick in the city's foundation: "mais de or sont acheves les fondemens de nostre cite" (720; "Now the foundations of our City are complete"; 62). Just as Semiramis's statue marked the beginning of the series of loci that forms the city's foundation, Cloelia's statue marks the final locus of the foundation's completion.
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With the foundation complete, the high wall that will surround the city becomes the next stage of construction. Accordingly, the subject for this series of loci shifts, moving from women's physical strength and daring to their intellectual strengths, including their invention in sciences and arts. While the previous stories emphasized women's physical accomplishments, these exempla demonstrate their intellectual accomplishments, alluding especially to the connection between memory and learning. Thus, Proba, a Roman wife and a Christian, reads the works of the classical poets, especially Virgil, until she knows them en memoire (725; "by memory"; 65) and understands them fully: "lesquelz livres et lesquelz dittiez, comme un foiz elle les leust par grant entente de son engin et de sa pensee, et si comme elle se prenoit garde de la signiffiance d'iceulx" (725; "after she had read these books and poems with profound insight and intelli- gence and had taken pains in her mind to understand them"; 65). Proba then composes her own literary text by joining pieces of Virgil's poems together to reveal the history of the Old and New Testaments-a process of composition similar to the one in which Christine herself is engaged. The story of Sempronia further emphasizes the role of memory in learn- ing: in her case, her beauty is surpassed only by her impressive intellect, which could recall anything at will. Where statues were the dominant motif used to build the city's foundation, temples become the visual motif used to construct the city's wall. These temples, which Raison explains were created in commemoration of the exemplary women who inspired them, serve as the visual markers to fix these loci into their places in the city's mnemonic system.
