ABSTRACT
Christine de Pizan's influence and competence as a political writer derive in part from her deep familiarity with the mirror for princes genre of didactic literature. The mirror is a magical invention and its reflective ability has given it great power as a metaphor in Western thought, and it evoked a complex series of images for the medieval reader. John of Salisbury's Policraticus was the first medieval and Christianized attempt to reconcile the demands of practical politics with an equally exigent moral philosophy, on the model of the great Republics of Cicero and Plato. De regimine was the first complete mirror written under the influence of the triad of Aristotelian texts that dealt with the 'practical wisdom' of the Philosopher; the Ethics, the Economics? and the Politics. Giles's strong preference for monarchy is much more than a mere adaptation of Aristotle's best regime.
