CHRISTINE DE PIZAN
AND THE
FIGHT FOR FRANCE
CHRISTINE DE PIZAN
AND THE
FIGHT FOR FRANCE
Tracy Adams
The Pennsylvania State University Press
University Park, Pennsylvania
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Adams, Tracy, 1959– , author.
Christine de Pizan and the fight for France / Tracy Adams.
p. cm
Summary: “Evaluates Christine de Pizan’s literary engagement with fifteenth-century French politics. Locates the writer’s works within a detailed narrative of the complex history of the dispute between the Burgundians and the Armagnacs, the two largest political factions”—Provided by publisher.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-271-05071-3 (cloth : alk. paper)
1. Christine, de Pisan, approximately 1364–approximately 1431—Political and social views.
2. Christine, de Pisan, approximately 1364–approximately 1431—Criticism and interpretation.
3. Politics and literature—France—History—To 1500.
4. Political poetry, French—History and criticism.
5. France—History—Charles VI, 1380–1422.
I. Title.
PQ1575.Z5A34 2014
841'.2—dc23
2014017173
Copyright © 2014 The Pennsylvania State University
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
Published by The Pennsylvania State University Press,
University Park, PA 16802–1003
The Pennsylvania State University Press is a member of the Association of American University Presses.
It is the policy of The Pennsylvania State University Press to use acid-free paper. Publications on uncoated stock satisfy the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Material, ANSI Z39.48–1992.
This book is printed on paper that contains
30% post-consumer waste.
Frontispiece: Miniature from British Library, Harley MS 4431, fol. 259v.
FOR HELENA OLIVER (1965–2013)
A woman of uncommon valor
Contents
Note on Translations and Manuscripts
Christine and the Armagnac-Burgundian Feud: Regency and Kingship
The Beginnings of the Feud and Christine’s Political Poetry, 1393–1401
3
The Point of No Return and the Political Allegories, 1401–1404
4
Jean of Burgundy and Reconfiguring Regency, 1405
5
Heading Toward Showdown and the Prose Treatises, 1405–1407
6
The Great Feud, After 1407
Epilogue
Notes
Bibliography
Index
This monograph came into being during my year as a Eurias Senior Fellow at the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Studies, 2011–12. My heartfelt thanks to the Eurias Fellowship Program and to everyone at NIAS, a place of perfect tranquillity and stimulating intellectual exchange, not to mention spectacular cuisine, for making that year possible. In addition to the warm, competent staff and my colleagues there, I would like to acknowledge Rector Aafke Hulk and research planning and communication director Jos Hooghuis for their friendship and encouragement. Next, I would like to thank my colleagues and friends in the International Christine de Pizan Society. As all scholars of Christine de Pizan know, research on the poet is possible because of the codicological and editing work carried out by the members of the Christine community. Thanks to all of you.
Special thanks to James Laidlaw, Kerryn Olsen, Glenn Rechtschaffen, and Christine Adams, who read all or parts of this study, and to Julia Sims Holderness for the many sparkling insights on Christine that she has shared with me over the years. I am grateful as always to Steve Nichols for his continued willingness to read and advise. Thanks, too, to Jeff Richards for his scholarly generosity, and to Gilles Lecuppre for patiently responding to my questions about fourteenth- and fifteenth-century France (any mistakes in this study, of course, are my own). I am grateful to Ellie Goodman at Penn State Press for taking on this project and helping me to realize it, and to the two anonymous readers for their careful readings and insights. I owe a large debt to copyeditor Suzanne Wolk for her painstaking work in preparing this study for publication. Many thanks to the people and the institutions that allowed me to present and receive feedback on this study: Peggy McCracken at the University of Michigan, Virginie Greene at Harvard University, and Cynthia Brown at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Thanks to the University of Auckland for granting me research leave in 2011–12, during which I completed the first draft of this monograph, and to our interlibrary loan staff, and, especially, our subject librarian, Mark Hangartner.
Thanks to my “family” in Paris, Tanguy, René, Nadine, Chérine, and Jean-Jacques, for giving me a home away from home, and to Sylvie for teaching me French and many other things. Endless gratitude to Glenn, Danny, and Elf for their patience with the long hours that I put into revising once I returned from NIAS.
Finally, in January 2012, while working on this study, I had the privilege of meeting, electronically, a woman whose spirit and courage in the face of the illness that ultimately took her from her family and many friends will humble and inspire me for the rest of my life. Although I would not presume to call her my friend, in deference to those who truly enjoyed that right, in the beautiful words that she wrote to