Sept manuscrits du Chemin de longue étude produits par Christine de Pizan, poète et productrice de manuscrits, nous donnent un texte standardisé et des images variées. Une étude de la place et de la nature de ces miniatures offre une compréhension de leurs rôles dans un œuvre du genre de songe. Par le moyen d’un examen systématique, nous cherchons la fonction et la signification de ces miniatures représentant des lieux courtois. Comprenant les miniatures de présentation, une image des Influences et Destins et celles de la Cour de Raison céleste, cet ensemble est rempli d’éléments symboliques. Dans cette thèse, nous cherchons la signification de ces éléments, soit héraldiques soit personnels, et des idées de l’auteur transmises par les deux supports, l’écrit et le visuel. Leur réception dépend, en partie, d’une connaissance de leur contexte historique, et les six derniers siècles peuvent limiter la compréhension actuelle des intentions de Christine. Seven manuscripts of the poem Le Chemin de Longue Étude, written and produced by Christine de Pizan, provide a combination of standardized text and varied imagery. Within this corpus, miniatures relating to courtly settings are systematically examined to determine their function and their significance. A study of the placement and nature of miniatures allows an understanding of their roles in a work of the dream-vision genre. Presentation miniatures are examined, as well as images relating to the Influences and Destinies and to the celestial Court of Reason. These miniatures are rich in representational elements including heraldic and personal symbols, and this thesis examines possible meanings intended for Christine’s audience through both written and visual media. Comprehension is gained, in part, by understanding the historical context of the production of the manuscripts, and the intervening six centuries may limit a full understanding to current readers and viewers. / Graduate

A limited variable editioned artist book, by measure of depicts an allegorical conversation between medieval author Christine de Pizan and a contemporary woman. It is, in essence, an exploration of edges in which the characters examine the parameters of identity, both personally and societally designated–how to define/re-define/emphasize/blur them, and what happens in the space where they meet.

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The purpose of this thesis is to analyze and discuss the relationship between the images and texts concerning Amazons and warrior-women in the collected works of Christine de Pizan. It evaluates Christine's interpretation of the ancient story in light of her career as an author and publisher, and it compares her imagery to other representations of Amazons and warrior-women. This study indicates that Christine reworked the myth in a way that reflects her positive of women and her desire to influence the queen of France, Isabeau de Baviere, who was the original owner of the manuscript.

This thesis focuses on the ways in which cloth and clothwork are represented in Old French romance in order to highlight how they relate to feminine voice, expression, and identity. By focusing mainly on medieval romance from the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, the field of research is narrowed to a period in which vernacular literature was redefining literacy. On the basis that literacy is not confined to the ability to read and write in Latin, clothwork is presented as a medium of literate expression, that being a form of readable knowledge or communication not codified in written word or language, and in the works of such authors as Marie de France, Chrétien de Troyes, and Jean Renart, amongst others, the presentation of clothwork fits this classification. My research focuses on gendered performance and gendered objects highlighting the divide between masculinity and femininity in materiality. Beginning with a contextualised and historical understanding of feminine clothwork, authority, and gendered biases in the Middle Ages in France, the Virgin Mary's associations with clothwork leads into an exploration of how the identities of women are tied to the cloth that they work or possess. From this basis, feminine voice in clothwork comes to the forefront of discussion as seemingly inaudible women make themselves heard through the use of needles and thread, telling their stories in cloth and tapestry. Throughout this study, an exploration of mother-daughter relationships is highly significant to the comprehension of feminine education and tradition in clothwork. The chansons de toile included in Le Roman de la Rose ou de Guillaume de Dole by Jean Renart underline the dichotomy and tension between oral and written culture, tying feminine voice to feminine clothwork and exploring the representation of this in the written text. Finally, Christine de Pizan's intimation of the importance of feminine tasks and brilliance concludes this study in order to better understand the ways in which the literature of the Late Middle Ages and Renaissance departs from the medieval presentation of clothwork as a typically feminine activity underlying and encapsulating a woman's identity and expressive power.

Although the works of Christine de Pizan have been of interest to scholars for some time, technological advances and initiatives to make digital copies of manuscripts available online have only recently enabled close comparisons between the visual programmes of her works to be made. This thesis demonstrates that detail usually considered secondary or 'paratextual' in Christine's manuscripts actually formed a carefully-constructed part of the work itself that Christine explicitly asks her audience to read. Through 'reading' the text and image simultaneously, the visual programme proves to comprise additional layers of meaning that were woven into her didactic works. These meanings can serve to supplement the educational and moral aims of the works, or, conversely, can be inconsistent with the message conveyed in the text, leading the reader-viewer to contemplate further on the matters presented and form their own opinions on them. Sometimes, meaning is created by intervisual connections with pre-existing iconography, such that viewers may be creating associations between the miniatures seen in Christine's manuscripts and other imagery, leading them to make certain associations - this is notably the case in author-portraits of Christine. As manuscripts prepared under the author's supervision came to be copied, changes were made to the iconographic programmes, testifying to and enabling different types of readings to take place. The findings of this thesis have implications for editorial practices of medieval works in general, as these tend to circulate in editions without the visual programme, providing modern readers with only a partial view of the complete work.

The modern nation-state is the product of a gradual process in which the religiously concerned medieval political and ecclesiastical synthesis became more secular and centralized. Mirroring this external institutional development, the theoretical conception of the state changed from one of a natural organic unity of diverse corporate members to a consent-based compact among atomized individuals. This change can be traced in the Body Politic metaphor of four authors: John of Salisbury, Christine de Pizan, Johannes Althusius, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau. In this project, I argue that the Body Politic metaphor, particularly the inclusion or exclusion of a soul of the Body Politic, is uniquely appropriate for capturing the complexity of political life in general across differing levels of aggregation and for elucidating the political and religious commitments of the authors who employ it, as they critique their own contemporary political and religious institutions and describe their ideal societies. In the conclusion, I suggest that the loss of a strongly organic conception of the state has denied modern society and political theory a well established means for incorporating corporate entities and for explaining the existence of the modern nation-state in any kind of transcendental moral context, thus the lost soul of the Body Politic.

This thesis will posit that a query of the medieval trope, Fortune, can be read as a query into femininity. Fortune is depicted with many quintessentially medieval feminine traits, and women in texts that discuss Fortune often have Fortune's traits. While texts that link Fortune and femininity usually do so to censure women, some writers turned the trope to their advantage for just the opposite purpose. Both Chaucer in the "Monk's Tale" and Christine de Pizan personify Fortune to subtly point out the flaws in antifeminist medieval view of women. This thesis explores the ways in which these writers cleverly took advantage of genre and characterization to use Fortune to defend women and womanhood.

L’engouement du Moyen-Âge pour le mythe troyen se traduit tout particulièrement à travers sa figure centrale, Hector. Benoît de Sainte-Maure, qui s’appuie sur la tradition homérique telle que l’a transmise la littérature latine tardive (Ilias latina, Éphéméride de la guerre de Troie de Dictys de Crète, Histoire de la destruction de Troie de Darès le Phrygien), fait du fils de Priam le héros incontesté de son œuvre, le Roman de Troie, et glorifie les exploits de ce guerrier à la prouesse exemplaire. Ce texte constitue le jalon majeur de la construction du mythe d’Hector à l’époque médiévale, dont témoignent les réécritures en prose ou en vers, même si, parallèlement, l’histoire de Troie continue d’être transmise par le texte latin de Darès ou sa traduction. À ces deux traditions s’ajoute celle qui naît de l’œuvre de l’Italien Guido delle Colonne, l’Historia destructionis Troiae, réécriture latine du roman de Benoît au XIIIe siècle. Cependant la notoriété de la figure d’Hector s’exprime aussi dans des œuvres où le personnage tend à se dissocier du destin de sa cité et apparaît seul ou associé à d’autres héros, troyens ou non, pour servir de référence en terme de bravoure, ce qui lui vaut de figurer parmi les Neuf Preux. C’est pourquoi le personnage va continuer d’évoluer indépendamment du roman de Benoît et de ses réécritures directes, ce qui se perçoit aussi bien dans la chanson de geste que dans les récits arthuriens. Les valeurs qu’il incarne intéressent aussi bien l’auteur de l’Ovide moralisé que Christine de Pizan. Figure exemplaire, presque archétypale, Hector est aussi un personnage protéiforme dont l’histoire ne cesse d’être réécrite par la tradition médiévale. / In the Middle Ages, the interest in the Trojan myth focuses particularly on its main character, Hector.Using the Homeric tradition inherited from the late Latin literature ( Ilias latina, Ephemeridos belli troiani by Dictys of Crete, De Excidio Troiae historia by Dares the Phrygian) as a basis to his work, Benoît de Sainte Maure makes Priam’s son the uncontested hero of his novel, The Roman de Troie, in which he praises the feats of this exceptional warrior.This text greatly contributes to the construction of Hector’s myth during the Middle Ages, as shown by its rewritings in prose or verse, although the story of Troy was also transmitted via Dares’ Latin text or its translation.In addition to these two traditions, another one appeared in the 13th century with the Italian Guido delle Colonne whose Historia Destructionis Troiae is a Latin rewriting of Benoît’s novel.However, Hector’s fame also asserts itself in other works in which the character tends to dissociate himself from his city’s destiny and appears alone or associated to other heroes, Trojan or not, to serve as a reference in terms of bravery, which earned him his place among the Nine Worthies.That is why this character continues to evolve independently from Benoit’s novel and its rewritings, as can be seen through epic poetry and Arthurian tales.Both Christine de Pizan and the author of Ovide moralisé take an interest in the values he embodies.Hector is a model, almost an archetypal figure as well as a character whose story never ceased being rewritten by Medieval tradition.

Ce travail sur l’iconographie de Fortune au Moyen Âge et à la Renaissance se base sur un corpus de plus d’un millier d’images dont seul un tiers y est reproduit. L'enquête commence par une nécessaire étude lexicographique qui permet de mieux cerner les sens du mot latin « fortuna » ainsi que ceux du mot français « fortune » entre le xie et le xvie siècle. Une seconde partie s’intéresse au motif iconographique de la Roue de Fortune médiévale – i.e. cette roue sur le pourtour de laquelle prennent place des personnages dont le premier monte, les second trône, le troisième tombe et le dernier gît à terre –, depuis sa genèse dans un manuscrit bénéventain datant des années 1060-1070 jusqu’à sa diffusion sur toutes sortes de supports (peinture murale, sculpture monumentale, mosaïque, etc.) ainsi qu’aux différents usages de ce motif (didactiques, emblématiques, divinatoires). Une troisième partie recense les nombreuses variantes que génère au fil des siècles ce très fécond motif : Roue de la Vie, Roues animales satiriques, Roue des Vicissitudes de l’Humanité, etc. Une quatrième partie étudie la personnification de Fortune qui apparaît au xiie siècle, tant dans les images que dans les textes, avant de devenir l’une des vedettes de l’iconographie de la fin du Moyen Âge, la figure de Fortune se retrouvant dans d’innombrables manuscrits de Boèce, Jean de Meun, Boccace ou Christine de Pizan. La cinquième et dernière partie est consacrée à la mutation que connaît Fortune à la Renaissance, mutation qui la voit changer tant de forme que de fonction, l’aveugle et duplice déesse du sort abandonnant alors sa fonction didactique – et la roue d’exemples qui va avec – pour devenir une accorte jeune femme nue à la mèche de cheveux flottant au vent dont la fonction est propitiatoire et l’usage emblématique. / This work on the iconography of Fortune in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance is based on more than one thousand images of which only one third is reproduced in the document. The study begins with a lexicographical study aiming at better understanding the various meanings of the Latin word « fortuna » and the French word « fortune » from the xith to the xvith centuries. The second section addresses the iconographical pattern of the mediaeval Wheel of Fortune – i.e. that wheel where four human beings occupy different positions on the rim: the first ascends, the second is enthroned, the third falls and the fourth lays on the ground – from its inception in a 1060-1070 Beneventan manuscript to its diffusion to various media (mural painting, monumental sculpture, mosaic, etc.) as well as its different uses (didactic, emblematic, divinatory). The third section identifies the numerous variations that this fertile pattern has generated over the centuries: Wheel of Life, satirical animal Wheels, Wheel of Vicissitudes of Humanity, etc. The fourth section studies the personification of Fortune which appears in the xiith century before becoming a star of late mediaeval iconography, her figure gracing innumerable manuscripts of Boethius, Jean de Meun, Giovanni Boccaccio or Christine de Pizan. The fifth and final section is devoted to Fortune’s mutation during the Renaissance: changing both form and function, the blind and treacherous goddess of fate gives up her didactic function – and the wheel of examples that comes with it – and becomes a beautiful naked woman with a forelock whose function is propitiatory and use emblematic.