This blog explores Les Epistres sur le Roman de la Rose, also known as Débat sur le Roman de la Rose by Christine de Pizan (her name is sometimes spelled Pisan). Christine de Pizan wrote these series of letters as a response to Guillaume de Lorris’ and Jean de Meun’s 13th century French poem Roman de la Rose. Les Epistres sur le Roman de la Rose, completed between 1402 and 1403, became one of Pizan’s most famous works. Punctuated interest in Pizan’s prose and writings in the early 1800s and the mid 1900s has led to a reprinting of her works. But only a limited number of original manuscripts remain. The particular manuscript considered in this study is housed in the vault of the Bancroft Library, on the UC Berkeley campus.
For current bibliographies see: Marie-Joseph Pinet, Christine De Pisan, 1364-1430, Etude Biographique Et Littéraire (Paris: Champion, 1927), Christine de Pisan., Christine De Pisan : Autobiography of a Medieval Woman (1363-1430), trans. Anil De Silva-Vigier, Rummana Futehally Denby ed. (Montreux: 1996).
