Christine de Pizan Presents her book to Queen Isabeau of Bavaria, in Collected Works of Christine de Pisan, 1410-1411Christine de Pizan’s 1402 work, Les Epistres sur le Roman de la Rose, is an immensely important manuscript. On a literary level, this manuscript was the first time that Christine de Pizan’s writings left behind courtly exploits, and engaged in an academic and literary debate. This work propelled Pizan into broader literary worlds and was a forerunner to Pizan’s most famous work Le Livre de la Cité des Dames (Kellogg, 2003). Thus it is in Les Epistres sur le Roman de la Rose that Pizan began to formulate her arguments about women’s virtue and positive influence.
The manuscript itself is comprised of forty-one parchment leaves bound in tawed leather. Each parchment leave has twenty-five lines of Bâtarde text, which are frame-rule in pencil. There are five quires in this manuscript; each is clearly collated and demarked by a heading that is rubricated and often has a simply-decorated initial. Gontier Col, Secretary of the Duke of Berry, was the scribe for this manuscript. However, the Bancroft version of this manuscript also contains barely legible annotations on the back page not written by Gontier Col; these markings offer insight into the manuscript’s provenance.
Christine de Pizan was a medieval woman who managed to live by the pen. The hundreds of songs, essays, ballads, and poems she wrote helped support her family after her husband’s untimely demise. Les Epistres sur le Roman de la Rose reveals not only her skill as a writer, but also the larger, sexist context in which she lived and worked. In one of her epistles she notes,
And you must believe me, dear sir, that I do not sustain these opinions in favor of women simply because I am myself a woman. For, to be sure, my purpose is simply to uphold the absolute truth because I know from experience that the truth is contrary to those things which I am denying. And as much as I am a woman, I am much better able to speak of these things than one who has no experience in this matter, and who thus can go only by mere assumption and guessing.
In this letter, Christine de Pizan makes two related argument. First, she argues that her opinions were not merely based on her sex; she comes to the defense of women because she is a defender of “the absolute truth.” Defending women, according to Pizan, meant upholding the truth. And second, she states that because she is a woman, she can speak from experience and with knowledge. Unlike the authors of Roman de la Rose, who “go only by mere assumption and guessing,” Christine de Pizan can speak with authority and truth.
Les Epistres sur le Roman de la Rose is thus a powerful rebuttal of misogynistic assumptions of the time and an illustration of the capacities of this female virtue, influence, and skill.
Quote from: "Now I Want You to Bring Forth New Books Which... Will Present Your Memory,” December 13, 2009. Retrieved February 26, 2010, from http://home.infionline.net/~ddisse/christin.html
