Jean de Meun in the Cité des Dames: Author versus Authority

Summary

The focus of this essay will be a sequence of three specific allusions to the Roman de la Rose found in Christine de Pizan's Cité des Dames, which have yet to be read in relation to one another. These references to the Rose constitute a potent example of Christine's use of Jean de Meun as a counterpoint for her own concepts of authority and truth, grounded in her experience as a woman. By comparing their respective contexts, and certain details present in or missing from each, we can trace across these nods toward the Rose an increasingly pointed challenge to Jean de Meun. The differences among the three allusions also reflect the modulation of Christine as protagonist within the text. As that persona she moves from being a confused and troubled reader for whom the supposed truth found in books destabilizes her own sense of personal authority, toward being an educated, emboldened woman having the wherewithal to speak on behalf of women and to offer counsel. The protagonist's evolution, in turn, is evocative of Christine de Pizan herself as an increasingly confident voice of authority in the real world.

Christine de Pizan (c.1364–1431), known as the first professional woman of letters in France, created a vast body of work ranging from lyric love poetry to prose treatises on warfare and judicious governing. With her Cité des Dames, written in 1404–05, she became the first woman to compose a formal defense of women, in which she systematically confronts and rewrites the predominantly misogynous discourse that had constituted literary authority for centuries.