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Article: Reinterpreting Christine de Pisan.
- Article from:
- Renaissance Quarterly
- Article date:
- March 22, 1994
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1994 The Renaissance Society of America. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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Widely hailed in literary histories as the first woman to be a professional writer, Christine de Pizan has until recently attracted relatively few editors and inspired relatively few critical projects. Her Cite des Dames (1405), a long allegorical defense of women's merits that could be considered the capstone of her career, was virtually unknown to modern readers until the publication in 1982 of Earl Jeffrey Richards' English translation of British Library ms. Harley 4431. Currently only Maureen Curnow's dissertation publishes Christine's French text (based on Bibliotheque Nationale, fonds francais 607). Richards' collection, dedicated to Charity Cannon Willard in ...