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Book Description
In The Book of the City of Ladies France's first professional woman of letters confronted head-on the misogyny of fourteenth-century Europe. Here, with the help of Reason, Rectitude, and Justice, Christine de Pizan constructs an allegorical city in which to defend womankind, using examples of female virtue and achievement both from the past and her own day as the stones with which to build the city's walls and towers.
This key text in the history of feminism not only provides powerful positive images of women--ranging from warriors, inventors, and scholars to prophetesses, artists, and saints--but also offers fascinating insight into the debates and controversies about the position of women in medieval culture, which viewed female nature as wholly given up to vice. This Penguin Classics edition also includes a superb Introduction that sets the work within its historical and intellectual context, annotations, a Glossary, and a Bibliography.
The Book of the City of Ladies is the sequel to The Treasure of the City of Ladies: Or, The Book of Three Virtues
Translated with an Introduction by Rosalind Brown-Grant
About the Author
Rosalind Brown-Grant is Lecturer in French at the University of Leeds, England.
One day, I was sitting in my study surrounded by many books of different kinds, for it has long been my habit to engage in the pursuit of knowledge. Read the first page
Concordance
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Back Cover
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Most helpful customer reviews
5.0 out of 5 stars
"Une généalogie au féminin",
This review is from: Penguin Classics Book Of The City Of Ladies (Paperback)
LA CITE DES DAMES was one of the first medieval books I have read (but I am by no means an expert in the area... yet!), and I recommend it to not only those interested in this period, but also for those interested in what we would call "women's studies," historiography, or similar endeavors. It is filled with many interesting stories from ancient times to Christine's own time, which also makes the book a pretty entertaining (and sometimes even humorous) account of the historic figures it discusses. Christine herself was an amazing person, so if you buy it, be sure not to skip the introduction - especially if you are unfamiliar with medieval writings: Some of the ideas presented (and how they are presented) are much different than how we would think in modern times, so it is important to familiarize yourself with things like massive over-proving (which may end up being tedious to the unsuspecting reader), Christine's view on marriage, and literary conventions that would perhaps seem very silly to us now, but worked well 600 years ago. Basically, when reading this book, if you keep in mind the context in which it was written, you should be able to appreciate it and like it just as I have. (by the way -- the book I read was not the Penguin edition, but rather the 1998 English translation by Earl Richards, ISBN 0892552301, so unless you're planning on extensive criticism, you should be okay with this version).
5.0 out of 5 stars
Witty and revealing look at a period primary source,
By Cas (the Idaho mountains) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Penguin Classics Book Of The City Of Ladies (Paperback)
Christine falls asleep while contemplating why women in her society get such a bad rap, and has a long dream about exemplary women and their characteristics.Did you ever wonder why we just accept that women in the Middle Ages were considered demons in disguise? Christine tells us all about what she thinks of that concept and of those who insist on spreading such maliciousness, all in an engaging story full of examples of brave, courageous, intelligent, pious, beautiful, generous women. The book was written to dispel some of the nastier slanders then current about women, but it's still good reading today. I confess that during the part about martyrs I wandered off a bit (it is some gruesome stuff in places), but as a period source, it's definitely one every history maven ought to have. Christine is intelligent, observant, and witty; her writing fairly sparkles with indignation over the treatment of women and her sardonic amusement at those men spreading those lies. While hyper-Catholic and in places highly allegorical (and in many places its version of "history" is highly questionable, of course), it is an essential look at a time period where women didn't often make their views known in written form. This book is distinct from "The Book of the Treasure of the City of Ladies".
5.0 out of 5 stars
Christine de Pizan Le tresor des dames-The treasure of women,
By katie koepple (CA USA) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Penguin Classics Book Of The City Of Ladies (Paperback)
In Christine de Pizan's The Book of the City of Ladies there is a very passsion in the style that she wrote in. Although for some it may not be the clearist book to read Christine shows herself and her writing to not olny to be magnificent but it shows that in an era where most women were in the shadow of men she became one of the most learned ladies of her time and even now in the year 2000 her works are sill being published. This book is for the people who enjoy midevil/rennasance writing or just want to see the views of the world from a wonderfully bright woman who in this book remarks about the other learned women of her time. Don't think this book to be out dated though, even now 600 hundred years later her work is far from being un-understandable and boaring. I also highly suggest looking into The Selected Writings of Christine de Pizan or even a biography about her amazing life.
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