Christine de Pizan: General Commentary

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CHRISTINE DE PIZAN: GENERAL COMMENTARY

CHARITY CANNON WILLARD (ESSAY DATE 1984)

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FROM THE AUTHOR

CHRISTINE'S DEDICATORY LETTER TO A COLLECTION OF DOCUMENTS IN THE QUARREL OF THE ROSE, ASKING FOR THE SUPPORT OF THE QUEEN

Although I am very simple and ignorant among women, your humble chambermaid, subject to you, eager to serve you (if you consider me worthy), I am moved to send you the present letters. In these letters, my most awesome Lady, if you deign to honor me by listening to them, you can understand my diligence, desire, and wish to resist by true defenses, as far as my small power extends, some false opinions denigrating the honor and fair name of women, which many men—clerks and others—have striven to diminish by their writings. This is a thing not to be permitted, suffered, or supported. Although I am weak to lead the attack against such subtle masters, nonetheless my small wit has chosen and now chooses to employ itself in disputing those who attack and accuse women, for, being moved by the truth, I am firmly convinced that the feminine cause is worthy of defence. This I do here and have done in my other works. Thus, your worthy Highness, I petition humbly that you accept my argument, although I cannot express it in as fine a language as another might, and permit me to enlarge upon it, if, in the future, I am able to. May all this be done under your wise and benign correction.

Christine de Pizan. Christine's Dedicatory Letter to the Queen of France. From La Querelle de la Rose: Letters and Documents. Edited by Joseph L. Baird and John R. Kane. Chapel Hill: North Carolina Studies in the Romance Languages and Literatures, 1978, pp. 65-66.

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FROM THE AUTHOR

CHRISTINE'S RESPONSE TO A LETTER FROM MASTER GONTIER COL, SECRETARY OF THE KING: COL HAD REQUESTED HER LETTER OF CUPID AND RETURNED HIS ANALYSIS OF HER WORK

And so in order to meet your wishes, I sent the letter requested. Whereupon, after you had read and thoroughly scrutinized my letter, wherein your error was punctured by truth, you wrote in a fit of impatience your second, more offensive letter, reproaching my feminine sex, which you describe as impassioned by nature. Thus you accuse me, a woman, of folly and presumption in daring to correct and reproach a teacher as exalted, well-qualified, and worthy as you claim the author of that book to be. Hence, you earnestly exhort me to recant and repent. Whereupon, you say, generous mercy will still be extended to me, but that, if not, I shall be treated as a publican, etc. Ha! man of ingenious understanding! Don't let your own wilfulness blunt the acuity of your mind! Look rightly according to the most sovereign theological way, and, far from condemning what I have written, you will ask yourself whether one ought to praise those particular passages I have condemned. And, furthermore, note everywhere carefully which things I condemn and which I do not. And if you despise my reasons so much because of the inadequacy of my faculties, which you criticize by your words, "a woman impassioned," etc., rest assured that I do not feel any sting in such criticism, thanks to the comfort I find in the knowledge that there are, and have been, vast numbers of excellent, praiseworthy women, schooled in all the virtues—whom I would rather resemble than to be enriched with all the goods of fortune.

Christine de Pizan. Letter to Gontier Col, October 1401. From La Querelle de la Rose: Letters and Documents. Edited by Joseph L. Baird and John R. Kane. Chapel Hill: North Carolina Studies in the Romance Languages and Literatures, 1978, pp. 62-63.

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