The Book of the City of Ladies

A 1405 allegorical work by Christine de Pizan that rebuts misogynistic claims and imagines a city built by and for women.

Allegory: A mode of writing in which characters, events, or places carry sustained symbolic meanings. The city and its construction embody the work’s case for women’s worth.
Querelle des femmes: A centuries-long European debate over women’s nature, education, and social status. The book became a major intervention in this debate over women’s worth.
Semiramis: A legendary queen of Assyria celebrated in classical and medieval accounts as a powerful ruler and builder. She opens the city’s defenses as an example of women’s political and military capacity.
Christine de Pizan’s Letters on the Debate over the Romance of the Rose: A series of letters in which Christine de Pizan criticizes the Roman de la Rose and its defenders. The letters mark the controversy that the city-building allegory develops at length.
Reason (personification): A personified figure representing rational thought and judgment in literature and art. Reason appears as one of three ladies who guide Christine’s building project.
Roman de la Rose: A medieval French allegorical poem whose later section includes hostile portrayals of women. Christine’s objections to its misogyny helped prompt the work’s polemical project.
Dido: The legendary founder and queen of Carthage, best known from Virgil’s Aeneid. Her rule and city-building help establish women’s capacity to found and govern states.
The Treasure of the City of Ladies: Christine de Pizan’s 1405 conduct book offering practical advice to women of different social ranks. This companion work turns the earlier defense into guidance for women’s conduct and roles.
Rectitude (personification): A personified figure representing moral uprightness and justice in literature and art. Rectitude supplies examples of women’s virtue and helps raise the city’s walls.
Jean de Meun: A thirteenth-century French poet who continued the Roman de la Rose with a controversial, satirical section. Christine challenged his portrayal of women and the authority claimed for it.

Linked from 3 pages

Didactic literatureBroader topic: Its allegorical dialogue teaches readers to challenge claims of women’s inferiority.