Christine de Pizan’s Engagement with the "Male Gaze"
Christine de Pizan’s Engagement with the "Male Gaze"

Summary/Abstract: As soon as one realizes that the act of seeing leads to a self-conscious apprehension of spaces, distances, subjects, others, subjects as others, and others as subjects, consideration of this type of act raises questions concerning the connections between one’s gaze and one’s desire and between one’s gaze and one’s gender. Versions of the Griselda story by Petrarch, Chaucer, and Christine de Pizan present an opportunity to investigate these kinds of connections, for one account has a female author and narrator, while the other two have male authors and narrators. The main argument of this paper is in one respect fairly predictable: through descriptions of gazing (and through other means) Christine offers a more feminist account of the events than her male counterparts.

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