Christine de Pizan, a lady in the city

Honored at the Paris Olympic Games ceremony, (re)discover Christine de Pizan, a forgotten figure of medieval literature, strikingly modern.

Who knew Christine de Pizan when she appeared, rising from the waters among nine other statues of women, during the 2024 Olympic Games ceremony? Few people, and yet Christine de Pizan was one of the first great female voices in French literature, and undoubtedly the most influential of the Middle Ages.

Arriving in France at the age of four and raised at the court of Charles V, she received an education that was unusually rich for a girl of that time. Widowed at the age of twenty-five, this education enabled her to take charge of her family by becoming an author, publisher, and business leader. But Christine de Pizan did not use her talents solely for her own benefit: outraged by the way literature treated women, she set about defending their cause in her writings and building them a veritable city where they would be recognized and heard.

In this essay, which is as personal as it is well-documented, Christian Demilly restores Christine de Pizan to her rightful place: that of a pioneer and founding figure of feminist thought.