Comment travaillait Christine de Pizan? Les variantes d’auteure en l’absence de brouillons

This article aims to present the way in which Christine de Pizan wrote and especially re-elaborated her works, through the study of two of her major texts, both of which had two successive versions, the Book of the Path of Long Study and the Book of the City of Ladies. It combines philology and genetic criticism, studying the presentation manuscripts, presumably corrected by the writer’s hand, as one would study an author’s drafts. We can see that, in manuscripts copied in a very limited period of time, sometimes simultaneously, Christine de Pizan introduced authorial variants that became more and more complex, to the point of creating new versions. The corrections also show the great importance the author placed on the language and style of her works. The study proves that it is worthwhile to apply the methods developed in Italian authorial philology to the authors of the French Middle Ages, for the example of Christine de Pizan, although exceptional, is probably not isolated

Art · Criticism · Feminism · Literature · Philology · Presentation (obstetrics) · Sociology · Style (visual arts) · Textual criticism · Classics · Historical Studies and Socio-cultural Analysis · History · Medicine · Medieval European Literature and History · Philosophy · Renaissance Literature and Culture