Christine de Pizan and Medieval French Lyric
by Earl Jeffrey
Richards
Providing the first synthesis of opinion on the lyrical works of
Christine de Pizan, these essays demonstrate their importance as
first-rate literary masterpieces and as documents of early
feminist thought.
Christine de Pizan, the French medieval poet today regarded as
one of the most influential women writers of the Western world,
has captured scholarly attention among those investigating issues
of gender, genre, and poetics in the Middle Ages. We return here
to her reputation as a lyric poet to see that Christine de Pizan
broke out of the stiff conventions of the medieval lyric,
introducing into poetry new subject matter that contained
immediacy and a female perspective.
Contents
Introduction
Part One. The Dynamics of Generic
Innovation
1. Christine de Pizan and the Transformation of Late Medieval
Lyrical Genres, by William D. Paden
Part Two. The Marriage of Lyric and
Narrative
2. The Cent balades: The Marriage of Content
and Form, by James Laidlaw
3. Last Words: Reflections on a `Lay mortel' and the Poetics of
Lyric Sequences, by Barbara Altmann
4. Tous parlent par une mesmes bouche: Lyrical
Outbursts, Prosaic Remedies, and Voice in Christine de Pizan's Livre
du Duc des vrais amans, by Judith Laird and Earl Jeffrey
Richards
Part Three. The Limits of Lyrical
Self-Representation
5. Clerkliness and Courtliness in the Complaintes of
Christine de Pizan, by Nadia Margolis
6. Translatio Studii: Christine de Pizan's
Self-Portrayal in Two Lyric Poems and in the Livre de la
Mutacion de Fortune, by Lori Walters
7. Lyrical Conventions and the Creation of Female Subjectivity in
Christine de Pizan's Cent ballades d'amant et de dame,
by Christine McWebb
Part Four. The Critique of Courtliness
and Expanding the Boundaries of Lyric
8. Christine de Pizan's Phenomenology of Beauty in the Lyric and
the Dream Vision, by Benjamin Semple
9. Poems of Water Without Salt and Ballades Without Feeling, or
Reintroducing History into the Text: Prose and Verse in the Works
of Christine de Pizan, by Earl Jeffrey Richards
Earl Jeffrey Richards is professor of Romance
literatures at the University of Wuppertal in Germany. He is the
translator and editor of Christine de Pizan's Book of the
City of Ladies, a Book-of-the-Month Club alternate
selection, and coeditor of Reinterpreting Christine de Pizan.
1998. 224 pp. 6 X 9.
Notes, bibliography, index.
ISBN 0-8130-1618-5
Cloth, $59.95
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"One of the greatest strengths of the collection is its cohesiveness. Each essay remains focused on Christine's lyrical invention, either approaching the issue through comparative studies or through close analysis of individual works. The essays are engaging and well written, and together they will certainly become key writings in the growing field of Christine scholarship."--
Arthuriana
"An important collection." -- Modern Language Studies
"Richards's vigorous and lively introduction makes clear both the cohesiveness of the collection and its originality. He is right to claim that most of the essays break new ground in Christine studies."--Thelma Fenster, Fordham University