Philobiblon

p. 29 To highlight their roles in the creation of these texts while again asserting their authority, medieval writers called attention to their talents as readers, In so doing, these medieval writers not only reinforced their reliability as interpreters of ancient auctores and thus used the weight of these earlier writers’ auctoritas, but also established individual identities, by effectively saying ‘I, personally, am a better reader than others’.

For example, Deborah McGrady’s discussion of Christine de Pizan shows how a 15^th-century writer laid out her interpretative prowess as a reader of the Roman de la Rose and beyond in order to prove herself worthy of being read. Asserting one’s greater skill as a reader broke from Christian churchly tradition based on Augustinian truth, wherein all interpretations were accepted, because all of them were readings of the truth that comes directly from God. This emphasis on readerly skill worked, paradoxically, to establish writerly mastery: not of original texts, per se, but of texts made by individuals rather than by the ancients, the Christian community, or by God himself.

Vernacular writers deployed multiple textual and visual cues to assert this individuality. For example, a writer might use the frist-person pronoun ‘je’ to underline personal agency. By saying ‘I wrote’. ‘I compiled’ or ‘I read’, writers highlighted their existence and their participation in the process of reading, interpretation and finally writing…. A common trope in the Middle Ages was that of the author’s nightly writing, based on the vern ‘verillier’, many authors claim that they worked on their texts all night, thus underlining their personal role in its creation. This claim is not so much a way of asserting originality, but rather brings to the fore the many hands at work in medieval textual creation.”

p. 57 the iconography in 15^th-century medieval Books of Hours advance an image of Mary as a reader that linked female religious devotion with the act of reading. These manuscripts contributed to a socialization of the viewing subject that asserted the acceptability and even desirability of female readership as well as female literacy and education.”

p. 64 “It was Christine de Pizan who constructed one of the first conceptions of female authorship. She did so by constantly calling attention to her own identity as female writer, crafting her own literary authority, and positioning herself in the pose of reading or writing in the numerous manuscripts whose production she oversaw. Throughout all three of these processes, Chrstine drew upon Christian doctrine repeatedly, tapping into the cultural background between female literacy and devotion already at work in the Book of Hours.”

p. 77 [Antoine Dufour’s Vie Des Femmes Delebres – which used Boccaccio’s c. 1362 De mulieribus Claris and Jacopo Filippo Foresti’s De pluramis Claris selectisque mulieribus of 1497] ]  “Antoine Verard’s 1493 printed edition ultimately reveals three aspects of the context in which famous-women biographies were printed. First, the anonymous translator, like Antoine Dufour after him, specifies that his text is meant for women, thus indicating that there was a substantial female readership in late medieval France – or at least that either the anonymous translator or Verard believed this to be the case. Second, we can infer that either the publisher Verard or the anonymous translator (or perhaps, both) viewed Anne de Bretagne’s political and social influence on their intended audience to be expansive enough to motivate the dedication of their edition to her. Third, by stating explicitly that his text is meant to defend women, the writer of the dedication enters into a dialogue about the virtues and vices of the female sex, thereby underlining for us the debate’s cultural relevancy at the turn of the 16^th century. Finally, we can note the shift from Boccaccio’s writing to instruct women in 1392 to the Verard translator’s claim to defend them in 1493.”

p. 169 Anne de Graville is known to have read both male-authored querelle texts and Christine de Pizan’s works, assimilating these rhetorical and visual models into her own literary output.. Marguerite de Navarre read Christine de Pizan and grew up under the tutelage of her mother, Louise de Savoie… represent a contingent of women  who became authors in no small part due to their educational milieu and their exposure to Christine de Pizan’s works and those of the male translators studied in this book. … Pernetter du Guillet and her work reach outside of court circles and into a context of print readership in Lyon… Louise Labe, like Pernetter, also stood outside the more royal milieu surrounding Anne and Marguerite; yet, she also assimilated Christine’s call to write into her own address to female readers and the works of 15^th-century male translators into her poetic voice.”