ABSTRACT
This chapter on Christine de Pizan’s self-fashioning demonstrates how she develops in her work an image of herself as a professional writer based on the opposition of her own experiences with battling the authorities of the misogynic tradition. Her main target is the widely read and praised Romance of the Rose, especially the section by Jean de Meun, whose misogyny and morally offensive vulgar language offended her. She is building a figure of authority in order to speak up, not only for women, but for all humanity. She tries to reach the universal from the experience of her embodied individuality which authenticates her moral, political, and philosophical insights. The details of her biography, especially in L’Avision Cristine (Christine’s Vision), her constant identification – “I, Christine”, the way she systematically represents herself in the miniatures at the incipit of the manuscripts she supervised – must be read in this perspective. The unique way in which she constructs her image of author is looked at in the light of a tradition of self-representation by her male counterparts.
