SELF-PERCEPTIONS OF FEMININITY: REPRESENTATION VS. MISREPRESENTATION IN CHRISTINE DE PIZAN’S “CITÉ DES DAMES” (1405)
SELF-PERCEPTIONS OF FEMININITY: REPRESENTATION VS. MISREPRESENTATION IN CHRISTINE DE PIZAN’S “CITÉ DES DAMES” (1405)

Summary/Abstract: The present paper dwells on the stylistics of Christine de Pizan proto-feminist discourse in her notorious “City of Ladies”: throughout the book, de Pizan consistently employs a literary strategy intended to oppose the entrenched, deeply negative, denigratory mis-representations of femininity, instituted by the traditional discourse predicated on male domination and exclusion, to outstandingly positive ones, thus presenting the reader with a “black vs. white” portrait of the woman, by which the “black” – or rather “blackened” – misogynistic view is countered by an utterly luminous representation of the feminine figures that inhabit and allegorically constitute the very building blocks of her city. She thus provides her readership with a highly suggestive opposition between the brilliance of virtuous women and the dark, unfair image she attempts to debunk.

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