Parergon

Early modern England is an increasingly important milieu in which to discern the textual presence of Christine de Pizan. Scholarly preoccupation with the 'regendering' of Christine's Livre de la cité des dames in early English translation, however, has complicated the recognition of her influence in this period. To seek Christine's literary legacy in England beyond direct citation, as embedded in the strategies used by male authors in the defence of women genre, is to reveal textual appropriations of Christine's work which are refashioned and regendered, but unmistakably present. Christine emerges as an important literary precedent in the English version of the querelle des femmes, whose presence in these male-authored defences restores a female voice to the male-dominated debate about women in Tudor England.