Christine de Pizan's The Vision is both a powerful contemporary response to the chaos that would eventually precipitate Henry V's invasion of France, and a fascinating view of the author's own progress as a woman reader, writer, and public commentator in the late Middle Ages. As a long-time intimate of the French court, Christine here analyses the origins of the civil strife in which France found itself in 1405, and offers a possible future, calling for its resolution in the voice of a prophet. Alongside her documentation of the difficulties faced by a medieval woman left widowed early in...
Christine de Pizan's The Vision is both a powerful contemporary response to the chaos that would eventually precipitate Henry V's invasion of France, ...