Christine de Pizan, Le Livre des fais d’armes et de chevalierie, ed. critique par Lucien Dugaz. Textes Littéraires du Moyen Âge, 64. Paris: Classiques Garnier, 2021, 631 pp.

Abstract

Abstract: Although it was one of the most unusual topics for a female writer, Christine de Pizan’s Le Livre des fais d’armes et de chevalerie from 1410 was a major success and can be counted among her masterpieces, although research has not yet paid enough attention to it. Written in the midst of the Hundred Years’ War between England and France, Christine emerges as a genius author on the principles of waging a war and on the ideals of knighthood, drawing extensively from classical sources, as was typical in the pre-modern world, and also from oral accounts, maybe by military captains. Christine Moneera Laennec had produced a brief edition of Ms. A6 in her Ph.D. thesis from 1988, and Summer Willard and Charity Cannon Willard had already published an English translation of the Livre in 1999, but Lucien Dugaz now finally presents a very solid historical-critical edition which immediately proves to be of the finest quality. The extensive introduction does not only present the large number of available manuscript copies (25 altogether), but also situates Christine’s text within the cultural-historical context, discussing, for example, whom the poet probably addressed, how she used her classical sources, and the major themes and concepts pursued by her.