About this Event
Christine de Pizan & Gender in the Late Middle Ages
This interdisciplinary seminar will be an interactive forum for thinking about the work of the French author Christine de Pizan (d. 1429/30) in anticipation of a forthcoming exhibition at the Bibliothèque nationale de France to commemorate the 600th anniversary of her death. Speakers will give short presentations followed by group discussion. Please see next page for abstracts & readings.
MT 2026 / / Wednesdays, 2 - 4:45 pm, Horton Room, Weston Library
***note that attendees will require a Bodleian card to access the Horton Room and that space is limited: please sign up via Eventbrite for each session**
Wednesday, Nov 18 (week 6): Christine de Pizan & Gender Fluidity
*Prof. Daisy Delogu (University of Chicago), “Se trouver trans in Christine de Pizan”
*Hannele Hellerstedt (Oxford), “A City of Ladies? Trans identity and the afterlife of the Livre de la mutacion de fortune in La Cité des dames”
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RECOMMENDED READINGS
Seminar 3: Wednesday, Nov 18 (week 6): Christine de Pizan & Gender Fluidity
*Prof. Daisy Delogu (University of Chicago), “Se trouver trans in Christine de Pizan”
The verb « trouver » in Middle French has a wide semantic field, from “to compose” or “to invent" to “to discover”, “to experience”, and “to perceive”; as a concept it operates in between the sense of creating something, and that of engaging with something that preexists. I would like to think about the creative and dynamic practice of “trouver” in connection to Christine de Pizan’s innumerable accounts of her own (self) generation as a person and a poet, and especially one of the most famous of these, included in the Mutacion de Fortune, wherein she recounts both her birth (to Thomas de Pizan and to Nature) and her transformation from female to male.
Required Reading
The Book of the Mutability of Fortune, trans. Geri Smith. 2017. Book 1 (lines 1-1460) (available via SOLO). Those who can are encouraged to read/consult the Middle French available in Écrire d’amour, parler de soi. Ed. and trans. Sarah Delale and Lucien Dugaz. Paris, 2023.
Recommended Reading
Cavanaugh, Sheila. “Tiresias and Psychoanalysis With/out Oedipus” European Journal of Psychoanalysis (11:2, 2024) (freely available online)
Salah, Trish. “What does Tiresias Want?” Trans Studies Quarterly 4.3-4 (2017): 632-38 (available via SOLO)
*Hannele Hellerstedt (Oxford), “A City of Ladies? Trans identity and the afterlife of the Livre de la mutacion de fortune in La Cité des dames”
In a miniature of La Cité des dames from The Book of the Queen, Lady Reason guides a group of women outside the city. The image seems to mirror the text, all but for a mysterious figure in the upper left-hand corner-- that of a man. His presence seemingly threatens to upend the entire ethos of the book. But what if this figure is intentional? Frequently viewed through a feminist lens, my paper will re-examine La Cité des dames within the context of the Livre de la mutacion de fortune. Using examples of transgender figures and cases of cross-dressing which populate the two texts, I propose a new reading of La Cité des dames as a queer space, made visible by this male-figure atop the roofs.
Recommended reading:
Christine de Pizan, ‘Book Two’, in The Book of the City of Ladies, ed. Rosalind Brown-Grant (Penguin, 1999).
Christine de Pizan, ‘Livre II’, in Le Livre de la Cité des Dames : Edition Bilingue, Traduite et Annotée, ed. Anne Paupert, and Claire Le Ninan (Honoré Champion, 2023) (available via SOLO)
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A special seminar series co-organized by Charlotte Denoël (Bibliothèque nationale de France) & Nancy Thebaut (Oxford) // generously supported by TORCH
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Event venue & nearby stays
Weston Library, Broad Street, Oxford, United Kingdom
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