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Christine de Pizan, France’s memorialist

Persona, performance, memory

Florida State University, lwalters{at}mailer.fsu.edu

This study deals with the ways that Christine de Pizan (c. 1365-1430) transformed her personal memories of King Charles V into an enduring form of national memory by allying her 1404 biography of Charles with official French history. To legitimize her role as royal biographer, Christine created a double-gendered persona evocative of Mary and Christ and Mary and David. Her persona allowed her (1) to ‘give birth’ metaphorically to the idea of a ‘wise king’ capable of guiding the nascent ‘nation’ of France mentioned in the official history, and (2) to unite symbolically the kingdom’s male and female subjects behind present and future monarchs. Pierre Nora, Mary Carruthers, Aleida Assmann and Susan Crane provide conceptual models that enable me to connect ideas of nationhood, memory and performance. I conclude that Christine became a link between individual and national memory, thus exemplifying Nora’s idea of the historian as living lieu de mémoire.

Key Words: memory • nationhood • Pierre Nora • performance • royal biography

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