Chance, Jane, ed., Christine de Pizan's Letter of Othea to Hector (Library of Medieval Women. Woodbridge: Boydell and Brewer, 1990). ISBN: 941051048
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Text name(s): L'Epistre d'Othéa a Hector

Number of pages of primary source text: 87

Medieval Author(s): Christine de Pizan

Dates: 1399 - 1400

Archival Reference:

Original Language(s): French - Old French;

Translation: English translation.

Translation Comments:

Geopolitical Region(s): France;

County/Region:

Apparatus: Index Appendices Bibliography Introduction

Comments:

Christine de Pizan was a woman who made her living writing, engaging some of Europe’s most famous intelligentsia in a debate over misogyny. Her father was an Italian professor and physician who worked in the French royal court, where Christine was educated. She married a French nobleman, and at the age of 24, she found herself widowed and a mother of three. With children to support and an estate to run, she turned to writing to earn money: she was probably the first woman to do so. She had an impressive career as a writer, and attracted patronage of many wealthy nobles. Her output includes love ballads, satires of courtly love romances, and allegories. She has earned a reputation as one of the West’s first feminists because she engaged many other writers in a debate over the misogyny found in Jean de Meun’s Roman de la Rose, and a wider debate about the virtues and skills of women. This work, wirtten in the style of a letter from the Goddess of Wisdom to a knight, explains proper chivalric behavior. The appendices include a medieval genealogy of the gods, a chronological list of major medieval mythographers, and a table of sources for mythological figures in Christine de Pizan’s Letter of Othea. There is also an interpretive essay entitled “Christine’s Minerva, the Mother Valorized.”

Introduction Summary:

The introduction (32 pp.) gives general information about the life and works of Christine de Pizan, before discussing the origins of Christine’s gynocentric mythology in the debate over the Romance of the Rose. Chance then discusses the mythographic tradition and the medieval genealogy of the gods, and how the Letter of Othea functions as a mythographic text.

Cataloger: MK