Reading and Writing as a Woman: Christine de Pizan and Cultural Mediation in Late Medieval France

Abstract

This article analyses The Book of the City of Ladies by Christine de Pizan from the perspective of the cultural history of reading and the circulation of knowledge in late medieval France. The central thesis is that De Pizan should be understood not only as an author but, fundamentally, as a cultural mediator whose writing intervenes in reading practices, criteria of intellectual authority, and modes of legitimation of knowledge. Through this lens, the article examines how The City of Ladies articulates a “politics of reading” that challenges the misogynistic consensus inherited from classical and medieval traditions without rejecting the formal frameworks of intellectual legitimacy of its time. The analysis is centred on three main axes: the critique of male authority, the construction of a pedagogical voice that conceives knowledge as a tool of symbolic protection, and the formation of a community of female readers capable of exercising autonomous interpretive judgement. Ultimately, the article argues that the work contributes to reconfiguring female authorship as a legitimate and active intellectual practice within medieval literate culture.