"The God of Love’s Letter" and "The Tale of the Rose": A Bilingual Edition. With Jean Gerson, “A Poem on Man and Woman,” Translated from the Latin by ... in Early Modern Europe: The Toronto Series)

Christine de Pizan was born in Italy and moved to the French court of Charles V when she was four years old. She led a life of learning, stimulated by her reading and by her drive to engage with the cultural and political issues of her day. As a young widow she sought to support her family through writing, and she broke new ground by pursuing a life as an author and self-publisher, producing an astonishingly large and varied body of work. Her books, owned and read by some of the most important figures of her day, addressed politics, philosophy, government, ethics, the conduct of war, autobiography and biography, and religious subjects. The God of Love’s Letter (1399), Christine de Pizan’s first defense of women, is arguably her most succinct statement about gender. It also rebukes the thirteenth-century Romance of the Rose and anticipates Christine’s City of Ladies . The Tale of the Rose (1402) responds to the growth in chivalric orders for the defense of women by arguing that women, not men, should choose members of the “Order of the Rose.” Both poems are freshly edited here from their earliest manuscripts and each is newly translated into English. Cover 1 Series Page 3 Dedication 6 Title Page 4 Contents 8 Acknowledgments 10 Abbreviations 12 Foreword 14 Introduction 18 Christine de Pizan and the Other Voice 18 Background: The Roman de la Rose 21 Pushing Back 1: The Epistre au dieu d’Amours 24 Pushing Back 2: The Debate of the Roman de la Rose: Voices Carry 27 “Qui sont fames?” Who Are Women? 31 “Par droite condicion et inclinacion naturelle” Through [Their] Rightful Condition and Natural Inclination 35 Inclinacions 37 Condicions 40 Meurs 40 The Intellectual Life of the Laity and the Place of the Epistre 45 The Dit de la Rose and Chivalric Orders 48 Manuscripts 53 Versification 65 Presentation of French Texts 71 Note on the Translations 72 L’Epistre au dieu d’Amours / The God of Love’s Letter 74 Rejected Readings and Variants to the French Edition 116 Notes 126 Le Dit de la Rose / The Tale of the Rose 142 Rejected Readings and Variants to the French Edition 178 Notes 180 Jean Gerson, A Poem on Man and Woman, translation, introduction, and note by Thomas O’Donnell 186 Bibliography 194 Index of Proper Nouns and Selected Topics in The God of Love’s Letter 220 Index of Proper Nouns and Selected Topics in The Tale of the Rose 224 Series Titles 228 "Critical editions and translations of two early works by the French proto-feminist author Christine de Pizan addressing the misogynist ideology of the Roman de la Rose and other writings, with a translation of a related Latin work by the contemporary theologian Jean Gerson"-- Provided by publisher