The Didactic Space The City in Christine de Pizan, Augustine, and Irigaray

Abstract

In late medieval literature, reading, writing and teaching are all closely bound up together. One manifestation of their interconnection is the proliferation of exemplary stories in texts of this period. In this paper, I examine a book made up of such stories, Christine de Pizan’s Livre de la cité des dames of 1405. I read it in conjunction with two other didactic works: Augustine’s City of God, which (as her title sufficiently indicates) is one of Christine’s models,¹ and Irigaray’s Ethique de la différence sexuelle, which I shall argue helps to elucidate her purpose. Irigaray’s work is addressed to the relation of woman to place or space, and the need to create a place that is both her own and capable of being articulated with the space of men. She also discusses the status of the City, which provides the principle of spatial organisation for both Augustine and Christine. A further link between Irigaray’s Ethique and Christine’s Cité is the epistemology of Aristotle, which spurs the reflections The City in Christine de Pizan, Augustine, and Irigaray of both. Christine’s work has proved controversial among modern feminist scholars, some of whom have found her endorsement of chastity or, in the case of married women, submission to one’s husband, to be complicitous with patriarchy.² In identifying similarities between her and Irigaray, I tend rather to align myself with those who see parallels between Christine and modern feminist thought.³

My thanks are due to William Burgwinkle, Marilynn Desmond, and Sylvia Huot for their help and encouragement with an earlier draft of this paper.