Christine de Pisan (Christine de Pizan) was a medieval writer and historiographer who advocated for women’s rights and equality. Her works are often considered to be some of the earliest feminist writings. Her works include poetry, novels, biography, and autobiography, as well as literary, political, and religious commentary. Her work has been translated into many languages and spread to many countries, and especially her view of women had a far-reaching influence in Europe and is regarded as a pioneer of feminism by contemporary people. Christine was born in 1364 in Venice, Italy. She was the daughter of Tommaso di Benvenuto da Pizzano. Her father worked as a physician, court astrologer and councilor of the Republic of Venice. After Christine was born, her father accepted the invitation of King Charles V of France to come to Paris as the astrologer in the king’s court. Christine was well educated and she had the opportunity to visit the court library for a large number of manuscripts of classical literature. Therefore, she had a well understanding of ancient Greek culture and the culture of the Renaissance. In 1379 Christine married the notary and royal secretary Etienne du Castel, and they had three children. In 1390, her husband visited Beauvais following the king and died of accidental illness. After her husband died, Christine is left with her elderly mother, two young children, a lot of debt, and she had great difficulties in inheriting her husband’s legacy. In order to support the family, Christine began to write, and by 1393, she was writing love ballads, which caught the attention of wealthy patrons within the court. Due to her skillful use of patronage in turbulent political times, she has earned the title of the first professional woman of letters in Europe. From 1401 to 1402, she participated in the debate about the 13th century French writer John De Mon’s ” Romance of the Rose.” “Romance of the Rose” satirizes the vulgar court love and regards women as the culprit and nothing more than seducers. Christine strongly opposed the language used by him because they were full of filth to women. This controversy has gone beyond the literary language level and has become a debate about the role and status of women in society. Through controversy, Christine established her image as a woman of knowledge, and her influence was beyond the scope of the court. After civil war had broken out in France, Christine in 1413 offered guidance to the young dauphin on how to properly govern, and she published ‘Livre de la paix’ (The Book of Peace), and this would be Christine’s last major work that contained formulations of her thoughts on good governance. In 1418 Christine published a consolation for women who had lost family members in the Battle of Agincourt under the title ‘Epistre de la prison de vie Humaine’ (Letter Concerning the Prison of Human Life). This time, she did not express any optimism and declared that peace could not be found on earth as the soul was trapped in the body and imprisoned in hell. Her last work, “Ditié de Jehanne d’Arc”, was written in 1429 and celebrated the French heroine Joan of Arc. In this work, Christine expressed renewed optimism, and this marks her end of career. Historians surmise that she have died in 1430, and after her death in 1430 Christine’s influence was acknowledged by a variety of authors and her writings remained popular. Within a century after her death, she was still a respected writer with wonderful reputations, an outstanding poet and a warrior who upholds justice. She was one of the few intellectual women in France in the early days, the first female writer to write in Europe, and also regarded as an early feminist.
Middle French (le moyen français) is a historical division of the French language that covers the period from the 14th to the early 17th centuries, and “Ditié de Jehanne d’Arc” is one of the literary work that fits into this period of time in history. The most important change during this period is the disappearance of the noun declension system. There is no longer a distinction between nominative and oblique forms of nouns, and plurals are indicated simply with an “s”. This transformation indicates a clear reliance on the order of words in the sentence, which becomes more or less the syntax of modern French. This period is considered a period of transition. Among the elites, Latin was still the language of education and bureaucracy and this changed in 1539, with the Ordinance of Villers-Cotterêts, in which François I made French alone the language for legal acts. The French language became clearly distinguished from the other competing Oïl languages, was imposed as the official language of the kingdom of France, and this leap-forward in literary of French prepared the vocabulary and grammar for the Classical French spoken in the 17th and 18th centuries. Interestingly, Romance linguistic nomenclature make the term ‘Middle’ only tied with reference to French, and there is no “middle-Italian”. Middle French is the period during which Old French collapsed and Modern French was created from the rubble. Middle French can also be referred as “le français ‘fluent’” and the word ‘transition’ is also often used when discussing this period of the language. Ayres-Bennett viewed Middle French as an era of linguistic instability paralleling with the political upheavals of the age and as a period of transition. The Middle French period is also marked by wars, epidemics, social, and political upheavals. It is frequently claimed that external factors (nationhood, ideology, culture) determine whether a given variety is viewed as a language or a dialect. “Le moyen français” is the period from 1285 to 1482 and these dates correspond to the territorial expansion of the French crown which began with the incorporation of Champagne and ended with that of Provence. Furthermore, technological advances and their impact on the proliferation of texts must also be considered. There was the invention of paper—cheaper and more versatile than parchment—as a key factor in the emergence of Middle French. Also, the end of the Middle French period is defined by the invention of printing and the availability of identical copies of the same piece for the first time in history. Spelling and punctuation in this period are extremely variable, so the introduction of printing in 1470 highlighted the need of reformation, especially in spelling. The massive influx of Latin vocabulary is a defining characteristic of Middle French. Undeniably, Latin vocabulary entered French before, during, and after the Middle French period, and this time, it is purely a more quantitative influx. Many Latin elements already existed in thirteenth-century French, but that the adoption of such items thereafter is of a different sense. The borrowing of learned [Latin] loan-words, which had been an infiltration in Old French, became a stream in the fourteenth century and almost a deluge in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Phonological criteria are not important for defining the beginning of Middle French, because it is morphology and syntax that best distinguish it from Old French. Latin mid vowels in stressed, open syllables yielded diphthongs in Early Old French; whilst other diphthongs arose through the vocalization of some postvocalic consonants. The remonophthongization of these diphthongs can also be used to define the beginning of the Middle French period, but this change is too gradual to define any distinct period. The extreme case concerns [a], which, in stressed open syllables, yields an /E/ of uncertain quality in Old French. It is postulated that this vowel is the result of the early monophthongization of an original diphthong. Other monophthongizations take place much later; for example, the diphthong [øu], which developed from [eu] during the twelfth century, subsequently monophthongized to [ø] in the course of the later twelfth and thirteenth centuries. The demise of the nominal case system is taken by many scholars as a crucial factor to define Middle. The loss of the nominal case-system is considered by Even Hall as “the only major watershed between mediaeval and modern French” (Smith, 435). The internal criteria used to define the start of Middle French are not qualitative, but quantitative. It is again vague since it is quantitative but not quantified. Certain phonological segments, prosodic features, morphological patterns, or syntactic constructions become more or less frequent—and when this happens, it is defined as ‘Middle French’. The end of the Middle French period is defined in qualitative terms as there was a complete loss of diphthongs and the resetting of the nominative case-assignment parameter. Nonetheless, Middle French period is defined internally in a relatively impressionistic way and with reference to a number of disparate phenomena phonological, morphological, and syntactic; surface and underlying.
“The Tale of Joan of Arc” is a patriotic lyrical verse, and it was the last work of the Medieval feminist Christine de Pizan. “The Tale of Joan of Arc” Christine composes 61 versus about Joan of Arc, the teenage visionary who led the French army to stunning victories in the Hundred Years War against the English and their French allies. This piece was written before Joan lost in battle and taken as a prisoner. The lyrical verse was completed on July 31, 1429 and this masterpiece is credited as the only academic work about Joan of Arc that was written during her lifetime. Christine died before Joan was captured and taken into prison, so, even though the poetic story emphasizes victory, Joan’s battle in September 1429 was unsuccessful, and this led to her being captured in 1430 and burned at the stake on May 30th. Joan of Arc’s nickname is “The Maid of Orléans,” and she was born in 1412, in Domrémy, Bar, France. She was the daughter of a tenant farmer, Jacques d’Arc, and her mother instilled in her a deep love for the Catholic Church and its doctrines. At the time, France had long been suffering from the bitter conflict with England (The Hundred Years’ War). In 1415, King Henry V of England invaded northern France, and England gained the support of the Burgundians in France. The 1420 Treaty of Troyes, granted the French throne to Henry V as regent for the insane King Charles VI. Henry would then inherit the throne after Charles’s death. However, in 1422, both Henry and Charles died within a few months, leaving Henry’s infant son as king of both realms. The French supporters of Charles’ son, the future Charles VII, sensed an opportunity to return the crown to a French monarch. Around this time, Joan of Arc began to have mystical visions and hear voices that tell her she had been sent by God to save France, support and install Charles as the king. In May 1428, Joan’s visions instructed her to go to Vaucouleurs and find Robert de Baudricourt, the garrison commander and a supporter of Charles. Baudricourt rejected Joan’s request at the beginning, but later in 1429 he relented and gave her a horse and an escort of several soldiers. Joan snipped her hair and dressed in men’s outfits for her 11-day journey across enemy territory to Chinon. Joan proved to Charles that she has the ability to save France when she correctly identified him, dressed incognito, in a crowd of members of his court. Charles always feels not ensured and he had prominent theologians to examine Joan and the result is that there is nothing improper with Joan. Finally, Charles gave the 17-year-old Joan of Arc the chance and allowed her to accompany the army to Orléans. In a series of battles between May 4 and May 7, 1429, the French troops took control of the English fortifications. During this time, although Joan was wounded, she still returned to the front to encourage a final assault. Joan insisted that he should go to Reims to be crowned king and though with hesitancy, although he still distrusts Joan, Charles and his procession still entered Reims later on, and he was crowned Charles VII on July 18, 1429. At that time, Joan was beside him, occupying a visible place at the ceremonies. In the spring of 1430, King Charles VII ordered Joan of Arc to Compiègne to confront the Burgundian assault. Sadly, she fell off her horse during the battle and got left outside the town’s gates. The Burgundians took her captive and held her for several months, because they view her as a valuable propaganda prize. Finally, the Burgundians exchanged Joan for 10,000 francs. Charles VII did not put much trust in Joan although her actions were against the English occupation army, so he did nothing to have her released. Joan was therefore turned over to church officials and she ended up having being charged with 70 counts, including witchcraft, heresy and dressing like a man. On May 29, 1431, the tribunal announced Joan of Arc was guilty of heresy. On the morning of May 30, the nineteen years old Joan was taken to the marketplace in Rouen and burned at the stake, before 10,000 people. One legend about the event says that her heart remained in the fire unharmed, and her ashes were scattered in the Seine. The Hundred Years’ War continued for another 22 years after Joan’s death. King Charles VII ordered an investigation about Joan’s case and in 1456, declared that she is innocent of all charges and designated a martyr. She was canonized as a saint on May 16, 1920, and is the patron saint of France.