In the manner of an exegesis, each of the 100 tales of the Epistre Othea is accompanied by several glosses. Over a series of ten tales (XXXV-XLIV), one of these glosses links the ten stories to the Ten Commandments. However, the Decalogue is not presented as ten absolute precepts by which the addressee is instructed to live their life. On the contrary, the Ten Commandments are implicitly shown to be something other than straightforward precepts, particularly for readers of noble birth. Instea...

Christine de Pizan is a medieval author who is known to have been actively involved in the production of her manuscripts, and in copying her own texts. Recent Christine scholarship has also credited her with a substantial role in creating the pictures that are found in some of her manuscripts. If the author was involved in designing the iconographic programme of her works, then it follows that their presence and content cannot be inconsequential. The extensive programme of illuminations in ce...

Although Christine de Pizan is usually thought of as invariably represented in a blue gown and white headdress, even within the apparently uniform portraits of London, British Library, MS Harley 4431, exceptions are to be found. The identity of the Christine-figures in this manuscript is shown to be far from straight-forward, hence the term 'ambiguous author-portraits'. This is exemplified through two chapters of the Epistre Othea, both of which warn against the dangers of love. The second ...

All author-portraits may be said to be performative in a sense, as they must by necessity employ artifice to represent (or to suggest the presence of) an otherwise absent author. The performances they engender are constructed by a series of dualities: representing both the author of the work and the subject of the representation; they denote both the absence of the physical author, and act as a reminder of their role in its creation; they are also generic, but have a particular referent. Auth...