Christine de Pisan

Christine de Pisan (1364-1430?), French poet, prose writer, and humanist, born in Venice, Italy. Her childhood was spent at the court of the French king Charles V, and she later wrote his biography. After ten years of marriage to the court secretary, Étienne du Castel, she became a widow at the age of 25. Thereafter, she worked to support her family by writing. Her first poems, ballades of lost love, were immediately popular. Prose works defending women include Épître au dieu d'amour (Letter to the God of Love, 1399), which was written to counter courtly love attitudes, and The Book of the City of Ladies (1405; tr. 1982), an account of heroic deeds of women. An autobiography, La vision de Christine (Christine's Vision, 1405), was written in reply to her detractors. One of her last works is Ditié en l'honneur de Jeanne d'Arc (Song in Honor of Joan of Arc, 1429).