Le Tresor de la Cité Des Dames was written in France in the year 1405. This falls historically during the late middle ages. By the year 1300 France was one of the largest and most powerful kingdoms in Europe and was united under the influence of the Christian church. However, during this time their power was shaken when the One Hundred Years War broke out against the English. The French officials responded to this conflict by strengthening the power of the monarchy. The economy of France remained solid during this period of both war and plague because France remained the agricultural center of Europe. Both the strength of the monarchy and the resilience of the French economy left some sense of social stability in France; although there were peasant complaints, the people raised no large revolts; At the same time the nobility continued to hold positions of privilege. This period was also marked by the development of a strong vernacular culture within French society, and thus we get works like those of Christine de Pizan. It was in the midst of this social, political and economic climate that Christine to Pizan wrote Le Trésor de la Cité Des Dames.
Christine de Pizan was born in Italy but moved to France at a young age with her father who worked in the court of Charles V. She married around age 15 another member of the French court. Her husband was supportive of her intellectual pursuits, but he died just 10 years after their marriage. Christine de Pizan was left with three children and in need of a way to support them. Pizan thus decided to use her writing abilities as a means for supporting her family. For awhile she served as a court writer but became famous for her poetry which she wrote in her adopted language, Middle French. Pizan is perhaps even better known for her writings on women ,which are considered revolutionary.
Pizan’s text, La Cité des Dames is considered one of the first feminist texts. This text was soon followed by Le Trésor de la Cité des Dames in the same year, of which I will be analyzing an excerpt. In this work Pizan tells the story of a mythic city that is ruled by “Reason”. It is a city of women; in particular ,famous women are referenced throughout the text. Pizan supports that women have intellect and refutes some philosophical thought of the time that women were “despised by God”. Her story uses reason to support women’s rights. This work is revolutionary in the sense that it stood up for women in an era where when they were unappreciated and undervalued.
I would like to briefly discuss the history of the French language from its Indo-European beginnings up to the development of Middle French. Around the 3rd century B.C a variety of Celtic languages were spoken by the people occupying what is modern day France. These languages are now referred to as Gaulish. Between 58-50BC Julius Caesar conquered this land for the Roman empire and Latin was promoted as the language of the society. While classical Latin became the adopted written language, Vulgar Latin which was the spoken variety became the widespread language of daily life in the Region. The year 375AD brought the great Germanic Invasions. Years that followed brought about the mixing of Germanic languages with Vulgar Latin leading to the divergence of “Romanic Languages”. Out of the Frankish variety of the Romanic Languages Old French developed, becoming an established language around the 13th century. Old French was a complex language including around 33 different vowel sounds and many new diphthongs. Old French developed further into Middle French during the 14th, 15th, and 16th centuries, replacing Latin as the written language of administration. Middle French structurally became much less complex than Old French and the pronunciation began to diverge even farther from Latin, while at the same time clinging to, and in some cases, reasserting Latin graphemically.