The allegory of female authority: Christine de Pizan's Cité des dames (review)

Abstract

Reviews 233 accompany the stanzas. Norse poetic terminology is usually rendered by the 'basic' meaning so that for example, w e find 'sword' rather than 'swinging twig of the mailcoat' in the translation of 'Egill's duel with Lj6tr', stanza two. In Poole's exposition the reader is frequently, though not invariably, aided by translations of short Norse phrases and should rarely have great difficulty in following the argument. Some readers may feU that the author is occasionally over-generous in detecting unity in his texts but his case is always carefully argued and generally it is convincing. The book is attractively presented on acid-free paper, with a useful twelvepage bibliography. Slightly regrettable, as introducing an amateurish touch into an otherwise very professional production, is the representation of the letter 'eth' by a 'd' with a horizontal stroke through it. 'Thorn' was, however, available to the printer. The statement in the 'blurb' on thefirstpage that what Poole calls 'Fri ger arflokkr' is an extract from Sextefha is both surprising and unsupported elsewhere in the volume. One abbreviation used in the bibliography, ASB (for Altnordische Saga-Bibtiothek) is omitted from the 'Abbreviations'. In his acknowledgements Poole speaks of his 'attempts to survey Ultima Thule from the distant perspective of Tena Australis Incognita'. This latest addition to the small band of Norse monographs with an 'Antipodean' connection should be welcomed by all interested in skaldic poetry qua poetry or in the role that the verse plays in the fslendingasogur and konungaso'gur. John Kennedy School of Information Studies Charles Sturt University, Riverina Quilligan, Maureen, The allegory of female authority: Christine de Pizan's Cite" des dames, Ithaca and London, Cornell University Press, 1991; cloth and paper; pp. xv, 290; 41 illustrations; R.R.P. US$49.50 (cloth), $16.45 (paper). Like Stephen Hawking's A brief history of time, Christine de Pizan's Livre de la citi des dames is, one suspects, a book much talked about but litde read. Maureen Quilligan's The allegory offemale authority, which more than fulfils its intention 'to help to make the text of the Citi des dames more readable' (p. 4), should do much to conquer reader reluctance for this 15th-century prose allegory about the construction of a female bastion, designed both as a refuge from the assaults of medieval misogyny and as monument to the achievements of outstanding women. The scope and theoretical underpinning of Quilligan's eloquent study belie its modest claim to be 'essentially a page-by-page commentary' (p. 2) on the Cite. Beginning with an eloquent plea for consideration of Christine's distinctive authorial persona before m o d e m critical theory completes the 234 Reviews authorial obituary, Quilligan's thesis is that the central issue of the Cite" is female authority: literary, maternal, and poUtical. What foUows is an absorbing, multi-leveUed analysis, ranging from the Citi's central architectural metaphor to discussion of its reconstruction of male 'precursor texts' which provide the Citfs literary grist such as Boccaccio's De mulieribus Claris and Decameron and the Speculum historiale of Vincent de Beauvais, Christine's construction of its gender specific voice ('Je, Christine'), and her self-positioning vis-a-vis the audores of the medieval literary canon. To the accompaniment of narratives about famous women from the Bible, history and legend, which are delivered by three personified female figures of authority, Reason, Justice and Droitture (Rectitude), 'Christine' sets about the composition of her textual city. In Reason's opening histories of female city founders, maternality, Quilligan argues, becomes an instrument which legitimizes female martial and political power and emerges as a continuing focus of psychoanalytical interest in the Cite'. The insertion of a female martyrology, which is without parallel in Boccaccio, into the last section of the work is, she suggests, a move against the authority of that auctor and a representation of martyrdom as a 'political' process, which publicly celebrates female authority over self and earthly power. The allegory concludes with an apologia in defence of the conservative ending to the Cite", which enjoins w o m e n to be virtuous wives, widows and virgins. Christine's politics, must in Quilligan's view...