The Mediterranean in the 14th century

Christine de Pisan

A poetess, a prose writer and a humanist (Venice 1364- Poissy 1430), she is considered as the first French woman of letters that managed to make of the profession of writer her way of living. She spent her childhood in the Court of the King Charles V of France and she wrote his biography in subsequent years. After becoming a widow while being very young, she was able to support her whole family by composing her literary works.

As a cultivated and merciful woman and ahead of her age, she embodied one of the first references of that stream of egalitarian thought that would be called, in the course of the centuries, feminism.

She composed essays on politics, philosophy and wrote books of poetry. She was a highly prolific writer. Among her literary production, as some of her outstanding works can be mentioned The City of Damascus (1405), Song in the Honour of Joan of Arc and The Lamentation over the Misfortunes of France.