Taylor Swift has drawn inspiration from women of the past, including actresses, in her work Clara BowCelebrity Rebekah Harkness and her grandmother Marjorie Finlaywho was an opera singer.
But sometimes I ponder what the 34-year-old pop star would consider the life and work of the Italian-born French author Christine of Pisa.
As early because the fifteenth century, Christine – often referred to by scholars by her first name because “de Pizan” merely reflects her hometown and he or she may not have had a surname – was preoccupied together with her share of “Dads, Brads and Chads“, identical to Swift within the twenty first century.
Considered the primary French woman to make a living as a author, Christine compiled the next:The Book of the City of Ladies” in 1405 to challenge the negative stereotypes of girls within the Middle Ages. In it, she offers dozens of examples of successful women from history, including queens, saints, warriors, and poets.
Christine's writings proceed to resonate—particularly with women—and are incessantly utilized in college courses on women and gender. I recently used excerpts from The Book of the City of Ladies in my course on women and gender in early modern Europe.
As I reflect on Christine's writings from over 600 years ago, I’m struck by how she recognized the damaging effects of attacks on women's intellect and achievements – the ways by which they could possibly be internalized and accepted when women break the stereotypes not questioned.
Building the “City of Ladies”
Christine de Pizan was born in Italy but spent much of her life on the royal court of France in the course of the reign of France the House of Valois.
Her father, a court physician and astrologer, supported her education along together with her brothers. She had three children together with her husband, a French royal secretary named Etienne de Castel, who died when Christine was just 25 years old.
Widowed and faced with the prospect of raising and financially supporting her children alone, she turned to composing works that appealed to elites, which earned her commissions from patrons. She wrote on various topics including a poem celebrating Joan of Arc's success on the battlefield.
Her most ambitious and enduring work, nevertheless, is The Book of the City of Ladies.
Disheartened by all of the misogyny she had read, Christine whimsically claimed that she had received a vision from three ladies: Reason, Righteousness and Justice, who had tasked her with the project.
By collecting stories of girls's achievements, Christine got down to construct an allegorical city where women and their achievements could be protected against men's insults and slanders.
In “The City” she specifically referred to “The Lamentations of Matheolus“” from 1295, a protracted Latin essay by a priest from Boulogne-sur-Mer, France. The late thirteenth century French translation could have been the version Christine read.
It is stuffed with hateful views about women, but Matheolus saves most of his anger for girls.
“Anyone who wants to sacrifice himself on the altar of marriage has to endure a lot,” he writes, adding that the torture of marriage is “worse than the torments of hell.” He derides women as “always quarrelsome…cruel and quarrelsome” – “terribly perverted” individuals who’ve “deceived all the greatest men in the world.”
Matheolus was not alone in his low views of girls. Other popular writings of this era included Jean de Meun's “The Romance of the Rose“, by which women were portrayed as untrustworthy and jealous, and an anonymous essay: “About women's secrets“, which provided misinformation about women's biology.
With a lot misogyny coming from so many sources, Christine acknowledged how easy it was for girls to imagine what was said about them:
“It is no wonder that women have been the losers in the war against them, since the envious slanderers and vicious traitors who criticize them have been allowed to turn all manner of weapons on their defenseless targets.”
Christine recognized the explanations for this widespread misogyny: women, who were smarter and kinder than men, were seen as a threat and a challenge the established patriarchy of western society.
Taylor Swift's 'Big Old City'
Like Christine, Swift is a gifted author who began making a living together with her pen as a youngster.
She built her own city, so to talk, to guard her status, her music and her self-esteem.
In her 2020 documentary “Miss Americana“, Swift talks about her struggles with media scrutiny that contributed to an eating disorder. In it, she describes herself as “trying to deprogram the misogyny in my own brain.”
She sued a DJ who groped her and wonwhich led to her being dubbed one among the “silence breakers.” on the quilt Time Magazine in 2017, in the beginning of the #MeToo movement. And in 2021, she began reclaiming her words and music by re-recording their older albums as “Taylor's Versions” after the unique masters were sold by her first record label without her consent.
AP Photo/Aaron Doster
In her songs, Swift also repeatedly confronts the lads who belittle her talent and intellect. your song”MeanIt is widely believed that it is about the critics who questioned her talent, such as Bob Lefsetzwho wrote that Swift obviously couldn't sing and could have destroyed her profession afterwards a shaky appearance on the 2010 Grammys.
“One day I'll live in a big old city,” Swift replies within the track, “And all you'll ever be is mean.”
At the conclusion of The Book of the City of Ladies, her mission to chronicle the achievements of girls, Christine de Pizan invites her female readers to affix her:
“All of you who love virtue, fame and a good reputation can now be accommodated within its walls in great splendor, not only the women of the past but also those of the present and the future, for this was founded and built to to do justice to all deserving women.”
Even though the City of Ladies was built centuries ago, I actually have a sense Taylor Swift would feel right at home on this grand old city.
image credit : theconversation.com