Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Illustrations and Tables
- Contributors
- Acknowledgements
- List of Abbreviations
- General Introduction: What's in a Name: the ‘French’ of ‘England’
- Section I Language and Socio-Linguistics
- Section II Crossing the Conquest: New Linguistic and Literary Histories
- Section III After Lateran IV: Francophone Devotions and Histories
- Section IV England and French in the late Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries
- Introduction
- 27 French, English, and the Late Medieval Linguistic Repertoire
- 28 Aristotle, Translation and the Mean: Shaping the Vernacular in Late Medieval Anglo-French Culture
- 29 Writing English in a French Penumbra: The Middle English ‘Tree of Love’ in MS Longleat 253
- 30 The French of English Letters: Two Trilingual Verse Epistles in Context
- 31 The Reception of Froissart's Writings in England: The Evidence of the Manuscripts
- 32 ‘Me fault faire’: French Makers of Manuscripts for English Patrons
- 33 The French Self-Presentation of an English Mastiff: John Talbot's Book of Chivalry
- 34 A ‘Frenche booke called the Pistill of Othea’: Christine de Pizan's French in England
- Bibliography
- Index of Primary Texts and Manuscripts
- Index of Primary Authors
- General Index: Persons and Places, Subjects
- YORK MEDIEVAL PRESS: PUBLICATIONS
34 - A ‘Frenche booke called the Pistill of Othea’: Christine de Pizan's French in England
from Section IV - England and French in the late Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 February 2013
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Illustrations and Tables
- Contributors
- Acknowledgements
- List of Abbreviations
- General Introduction: What's in a Name: the ‘French’ of ‘England’
- Section I Language and Socio-Linguistics
- Section II Crossing the Conquest: New Linguistic and Literary Histories
- Section III After Lateran IV: Francophone Devotions and Histories
- Section IV England and French in the late Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries
- Introduction
- 27 French, English, and the Late Medieval Linguistic Repertoire
- 28 Aristotle, Translation and the Mean: Shaping the Vernacular in Late Medieval Anglo-French Culture
- 29 Writing English in a French Penumbra: The Middle English ‘Tree of Love’ in MS Longleat 253
- 30 The French of English Letters: Two Trilingual Verse Epistles in Context
- 31 The Reception of Froissart's Writings in England: The Evidence of the Manuscripts
- 32 ‘Me fault faire’: French Makers of Manuscripts for English Patrons
- 33 The French Self-Presentation of an English Mastiff: John Talbot's Book of Chivalry
- 34 A ‘Frenche booke called the Pistill of Othea’: Christine de Pizan's French in England
- Bibliography
- Index of Primary Texts and Manuscripts
- Index of Primary Authors
- General Index: Persons and Places, Subjects
- YORK MEDIEVAL PRESS: PUBLICATIONS
Summary
Christine de Pizan anticipated, actively encouraged and even occasionally oversaw the exportation and reception of her manuscripts throughout Europe. She specified, however, the importance of their dissemination in French:
[P]arce que la dicte langue plus est commune par l'univers monde que quelconques autre, ne demourra pas pour tant vague et non utile nostre dicte oeuvre, qui durera au siecle sanz decheement par diverses copies.
(Since French is a more common and universal language than any other, this work will not remain unknown and useless, but will endure in its many copies throughout the world.)
For scholars of Christine's reception in England, English vernacular versions of her work have taken priority as the most informative, even inevitable, instances of the early English ‘response’ to Christine. A systematic examination of French manuscripts produced either in England or for English patrons, however, has not yet taken place, nor is a comprehensive list available. With few exceptions, the significance of French copies for Christine's reception in England has passed unobserved.
Christine's Epistre d'Othea, a letter from the fictional goddess Othea to the Trojan prince Hector, laid claim to a wide medieval audience. Although three separate translations of the Othea (including one printed version) appeared in England during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, French manuscripts of the text circulated amongst English audiences in still greater numbers. Five of the eight French-language manuscripts of the Othea currently held in libraries in England reached their English audience no later than 1535, and of these at least three were produced by scribes and illustrators working in England or on the continent for English patrons.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Language and Culture in Medieval BritainThe French of England, c.1100–c.1500, pp. 457 - 468Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2009