A Medieval French Book in an Early Modern English World: Christine de Pisan’s Livre de la Cité des Dames and Women Readers in the Age of Print

Abstract

The Boke of the Cyte of Ladyes is Bryan Anslay’s 1521 translation of Christine de Pisan’s Le Livre de la Cité des Dames. Its form as an English printed book had implications for its readership and reception: Christine’s emphases on rhetoric, reading, and scholarship dovetailed with the spread in England of more accessible books and education. Given the cultural context of the early sixteenth century – a time during which print was beginning to compete with manuscript, women were becoming an important segment of the market for books, and Protestant values were negotiating coexistence with Catholic culture – we can deduce that Anslay’s version of Christine’s text resonated more strongly with sixteenth-century English readers than the original did with its fifteenth-century French audience, gaining more sympathy for Christine’s goal of elevating the status of women.