Socio-historical Introduction to Ditie de Jehanne d’Arc
Christine de Pizan was an Italian born female poet who lived in France in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries and wrote for many noblemen in the French court at the time including Charles V of France. She was married at the age of 15 and widowed at the age of 25. She began writing to support her family and was met with success writing love ballads commissioned by French and English nobility. At the time French was the language of the ruling class in England and had been since the Norman Conquest. Catherine de Pizan wrote exclusively in the French vernacular of the time, which is now classified as Middle French.
Middle French is a Romance Language that evolved from Vulgar Latin, and is what modern standard French is based off of today. Middle French is descended from Oïl dialect, which originated in Northern France. It was the official form of French used throughout France, which caused the French people to become more unified nationally over this time as they were unified linguistically. Middle French was the precursor to Classical French spoken during l’Ancien Régime.
Later in her career she wrote many prose pieces, including an account of the life of Charles V of France called Le Livre des fais et bonnes meurs du sage roy Charles V. She wrote independent works about women and their place and function in medieval society and was a champion for favorable literary depictions of women in court such as Le Livre de la cité des dames and Le Livre des trois vertus. More recently this has granted her favor as a prominent female literary historical figure, which are few and far between in the middle ages.
Her final work—and one of her most prominent—was an epic poem detailing the triumphs of Joan of Arc entitled Ditie de Jehanne d’Arc or The Song of Joan of Arc. Joan of Arc was a French peasant who led the French army during the end of the Hundred Years’ War after purportedly speaking to God. Catherine de Pizan cements Joan of Arc’s divine instructions, taking her as evidence that God intended French victory and success, and in this way the poem is very nationalistic. It is the only epic poem type work written in French at the time.
The Hundred Years’ War was fought between the kingdoms of England and France and their allies between 1337 and 1453. This was a time of the breakdown of the feudal system in Europe and the war served to strengthen English and French nationalities by being unified against one another. Ditie de Jehanne d’Arc reflects the social and cultural unification of the people of France because it portrays Joan of Arc as a being sent by God to win the war which had already lasted for nearly one hundred years and taken serious tolls on the population.