Le chemin de longue étude

by Christine de Pizan

La collection Lettres gothiques se propose d'ouvrir au public le plus large un accès à la fois direct, aisé et sûr à la littérature du Moyen Age. Un accès direct en mettant chaque fois sous les yeux du lec-teur le texte original. Un accès aisé grâce à la traduction en français moderne proposée en regard, à l'introduction et aux notes qui l'accompagnent. Un accès sûr grâce aux soins dont font l'objet traductions et commentaires. La collection Lettres gothiques offre ainsi un panorama représentatif de l'ensemble de la littérature médiévale.


Christine de Pizan, fille d'un médecin et astrologue italien au service de Charles V, se retrouve veuve à vingt-neuf ans, avec la charge de trois enfants. Elle devient alors la première femme à vivre de son métier d'écrivain et se montre très soucieuse de défendre les femmes, calomniées et maltraitées dans un monde masculin.
En écrivant Le Chemin de Longue Etude, Christine de Pizan veut prouver sa capacité à entrer dans le débat moral et politique de son temps. A la faveur d'une vision, elle gagne les sphères célestes et assiste à un débat entre les forces qui régissent la société. Ce débat vise à déterminer les qualités idéales d'un prince qui gouvernerait le monde entier. Quand elle redescend sur terre, elle est prête à en soumettre le texte au roi de France. Son poème pourra contribuer ainsi à la réforme du pays.

Oeuvre majeure de Christine de Pizan, Le Chemin de Longue Etude était jusqu'ici introuvable. Le présent volume en offre une édition nouvelle - la première depuis plus d'un siècle - et, pour la première fois, une traduction en français moderne.

Genres: Classics, France, Fiction, School

467 pages, Pocket Book

First published December 1, 1999

About the author

Christine de Pizan (also seen as de Pisan) (1363–c.1434) was a writer and analyst of the medieval era who strongly challenged misogyny and stereotypes that were prevalent in the male-dominated realm of the arts. De Pizan completed forty-one pieces during her thirty-year career (1399–1429). She earned her accolade as Europe’s first professional woman writer (Redfern 74). Her success stems from a wide range of innovative writing and rhetorical techniques that critically challenged renowned male writers such as Jean de Meun who, to Pizan’s dismay, incorporated misogynist beliefs within their literary works.

In recent decades, de Pizan's work has been returned to prominence by the efforts of scholars such as Charity Cannon Willard and Earl Jeffrey Richards. Certain scholars have argued that she should be seen as an early feminist who efficiently used language to convey that women could play an important role within society, although this characterisation has been challenged by other critics who claim either that it is an anachronistic use of the word, or that her beliefs were not progressive enough to merit such a designation

Reviews

[Chris 2.0 · Rating 4 out of 5]

(4,25) après m’être fait chier dessus par un oiseau aujourd’hui, heureusement que Christine de Pizan est là pour sauver cette journée

[aliceenjoysreading · Rating 5 out of 5]

Une agréable lecture pour qui souhaite mieux connaître la littérature médiévale.

[Aurélien Thomas · Rating 3 out of 5]

At the time of the writing of this book (1402) Christine de Pizan had much to be concerned about. Her country (France) was then plagued by a war against England, and it was just a matter of a few years before it would also descend into the Armagnac-Burgundian civil war. The situation might have been dire and dreadful, yet it had inspired her this long poem; an allegory on who's to blame for the state of her world and what could be done about it.

Being a retelling of the author's journey across various celestial spheres, much has been said about how it was based on Dante's 'Divine Comedy'. The comparison, though, stops there. If the structure may be loosely similar, Christine de Pizan does something very different when it comes to the content, as hers is about exposing a debate between Chivalry, Nobility, Wealth, and Wisdom to try and reach a consensus to solve the world's problems. Each starts by accusing each other for all the predicaments of the world before, at the suggestion of Reason, debating of what qualities should be embodied by a rightful leader who, it's expected, would be nominated to sort things out.

Now, as usual with Christine de Pizan what is striking here are two things. First, her putting forward of female characters to show female agency. She is, indeed, a woman taken by another woman to travel 'the path of long study', where she will ultimately meet the allegories named above (all females) before being chosen as their messenger to mankind. In a male world which was mostly dominated by male voices, the perspective was/ is refreshing. Then, her outlining of the medieval mentality even if, to her, there was nothing unusual here since she was just the product of a zeitgest to which, in many respect, she fully subscribed. The arguments put forth by Nobility, Chivalry and Wealth especially will strike as being seriously outdated to a modern audience; yet these arguments were nothing but common sense to medieval minds. She, then, can be accused of just parroting them without critical thinking, but to those interested in how people from another era thought and behaved such parroting ends up by being very enlightening in itself. One has indeed to be careful when assessing such historical figures; as for all her views deemed proto-feminism in many respect she, nevertheless, fully abided to many traditional standards of her time and it shows here (no matter how astute she had been on certain issues, she was certainly no revolutionary...).

In the end, this text surely has lost its poetry per se. This is not because it's badly written (it isn't!) but because it's written in Middle French, and so is impossible to assess in the original unless one reads Middle French (I don't). Having said that, as an allegory it remains a striking, enlightening journey. It's quite long to start, as it takes time before we enter into the debate itself. It, also, ends regretfully quite abruptly, as she is awaken from her dream a mere few verses after the debate actually ended! The arguments made, though, no matter how outdated to a modern audience are cleverly made, and demonstrate the author to have been a sharp mind as much as a creative one.

Is it a must-read? To those seeing Christine de Pizan only as a proto-feminist, and so concerned only about her work when explicitly addressing women's place and value in society, this poem won't be of interest by any shot. To others, though, curious about an era and how its many contemporaries thought, it will be a delightful allegory for what were troubled time and the ethos of those who lived through them. I, for one, took great pleasure reading this.

[Klem · Rating 5 out of 5]

Lecture agréable et intemporelle