Supplemental 5: Christine de Pizan and the Body Politic

Christine de Pizan was the favorite court writer of many of the most important Lords and Ladies of France in the early 1400s. She started her career writing Love Poetry before expanding to writing treatises on Politics, History, Gender, and Theology. In this episode I’ll trace her political thought as the Armagnac-Burgundian civil war rages by focusing on three of her writings: The Book of the Body Politic, The Lament on the Evils of Civil War, and The Book of Peace.

Christine’s Writings

The Book of the Body Politic – Edited by Kate Langdon Forhan

The Lament on the Evils of Civil War

The Book of Peace – Edited by Karen Green, Constant J. Mews, and Janice Pinder

The Vision of Christine de Pizan

Book on the Mutability of Fortune

Letter to the Queen of France (1405)

Secondary Sources

In Politics, Gender, and Genre: The Political Thought of Christine de Pizan edited by Margaret Brabant

Polycracy, Obligation, and Revolt: The Body Politic in John of Salisbury and Christine de Pizan by Kate Langdon Forhan

L’Avision Christine: Autobiographical Narrative or Mirror for the Prince? by Rosalind Brown-Grant

The Political Rhetoric of Christine de Pizan: Lamentacion sur les maux de la guerre civile by Linda Leppic

The Subversive “Seulette” by Mary McKinley

In Healing the Body Politic: The Political Thought of Christine de Pizan edited by Karen Green and Constant Mews

Latin Learning in Christine de Pizan’s Livre de paix by Constant Mews

Moyennerresse de traictie de paix: Christine de Pizan’s Mediators by Tracy Adams

Petit estat vesval: Christine de Pizan’s Grieving Body Politic by Louise d’Arcens

Christine de Pizan and the Body Politic by Tsae Lan Lee Dow

Other Secondary Sources

Christine de Pizan and the Fight for France by Tracy Adams

The Political Theory of Christine de Pizan by Kate Langdon Forhan

Antigone’s Example: Early Modern Women’s Political Writing in Times of Civil War from Christine de Pizan to Helen Maria Williams by Mihoko Suzuki

The Body Politic in Medieval France: Christine de Pizan’s Le libre du corps de policie by Erica Piedra

Christine de Pizan’s Changing Opinion: A quest for Certainty in the midst of Chaos by Douglas Kelly

Poets, Saints, and Visionaries of The Great Schism, 1378–1417 by Renate Blumenfeld-Kosinski

Christine de Pizan’s Epistre a la reine: A Woman’s Perspective on War and Peace? by Angus Kennedy

The Education of “the Good Prince”. Repetition and Variation in Christine de Pizan’s Livvre du corps de policiae and the Livre de paix by Angus Kennedy

The Life and Afterlife of Isabeau of Bavaria by Tracy Adams