Welcome to the enlarged Version 2 of the Christine de Pizan Database which draws on a corpus of modern scholarly editions of her works in verse and prose.
Although it has been enlarged, the Database is not complete: copyright reasons have made it impossible to include several prose works recently published in new editions. It is hoped, nonetheless, that the larger body of material presented here will encourage further research on Christine the writer, and on the themes and subjects which inspired her.
For the first time, the Database includes details of Christine's choice of rhymes, making available an additional resource intended to facilitate the study of her language.
A parallel corpus, based not on scholarly editions but on transcriptions of the thirty works which Christine selected for presentation to Queen Isabeau of France in 1414 (London, British Library, Harley MS 4431), is being developed as part of The Making of the Queen's Manuscript, a research project funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council. For further information please see
www.pizan.lib.ed.ac.uk.
Comments and suggestions are very welcome, and should please be sent to:
Professor James Laidlaw
DELC / French
University of Edinburgh
60 George Square
Edinburgh EH8 9JU
UK
Email: James.Laidlaw@ed.ac.uk
The Christine de Pizan Database is made up of a series of computer text files.
Each file contains the text of one work by Christine de Pizan as it has been published in a
modern scholarly edition. (Any variants which form part of that edition are not included.)
The text files, a corpus of 518702 words, have been analysed with the aid of the
Oxford Concordance Program (OCP) to produce the following tools:
1) Wordlist
2) Reverse Wordlist
3) Concordance "A-"
4) Concordance "B-"
5) Concordance "C-"
6) Concordance "D-"
7) Concordance "E-"
8) Concordance "F-"
9) Concordance "G-"
10) Concordance "H-"
11) Concordance "I-"
12) Concordance "J-"
13) Concordance "K-"
14) Concordance "L-"
15) Concordance "M-"
16) Concordance "N-"
17) Concordance "O-"
18) Concordance "P-"
19) Concordance "Q-"
20) Concordance "R-"
21) Concordance "S-"
22) Concordance "T-"
23) Concordance "U-"
24) Concordance "V-"
25) Concordance "W-"
26) Concordance "X-"
27) Concordance "Z-"
28) List of Rhyme-words
29) Reverse List of Rhyme-words
30) List of Names
Before consulting any of the files, it is important to read the information
provided about Alphabet and about References.
Access to the Database
For copyright reasons users of the database cannot access the text files.
The computer files used to generate the lists and the concordances replicate so far as
possible the lay-out of the scholarly edition on which they are based.
Dashes which occur at the end of a printed line have been treated in one of two ways as follows:
1) Where the printer has hyphenated the word and set it on two consecutive lines in order to justify the text, the word has been restored by omitting the hyphen and pulling back the letters carried over to the line following.
2) Where the word was divided by Christine herself, for example by postponing the adverbial suffix -ment to the line of verse next following, the two parts of the word have been reunited. Thus plainiereMent forms part of lines 14-15 of Autre balade 45: the internal capital letter serves to indicate that Christine divided the word between two verse lines.
3) Superscript letters are marked by a circumflex, thus .II.^e^, .X^me^.
Any errata listed in the edition have been silently incorporated in the text files.
The editions used in preparing Release 2 are as follows:
1) OEuvres poétiques de Christine de Pisan, publiées par Maurice Roy, Société des anciens textes français, 3 volumes (Paris: Firmin Didot, 1886, 1891, 1896).
2) Christine de Pizan: Le chemin de longue étude, publié par Andrea Tarnowski (Paris: Livre de poche, 2000). [Used with the permission of Professor Tarnowski and Livre de Poche.]
3) Le Livre de la mutacion de Fortune par Christine de Pisan, publié par Suzanne Solente, Société des anciens textes français, 4 volumes (Paris: Picard, 1959, 1959, 1964, 1966). [Used with the permission of the Société des anciens textes français.]
4) Christine de Pisan: Le Livre des fais et bonnes meurs du sage roy Charles V , publié par Suzanne Solente, Société de l'histoire de France, 2
volumes (Paris: Champion, 1936-40). [Used with the permission of the Société
de l'histoire de France.]
5) 'Christine de Pizan's Epistre à la reine', édité par Angus J. Kennedy, Revue des langues romanes, 92 (1988) ,
pp. 253-264. [Used by permission of Professor Kennedy.]
6) Les Sept Psaumes allegorisés, edited by Ruth
Ringland Rains (Washington: The Catholic University of America Press, 1965).
[Used with the permission of Dr Rains.]
7) 'La Lamentacion sur les maux de la France de Christine de Pisan', edited by Angus J. Kennedy, Mélanges de langue et littérature françaises du
moyen âge et de la renaissance offerts à Charles Foulon, 2 volumes (Rennes:
Institut de français, Université de Haute-Bretagne,1980), I, 177-85. [Used by
permission of Professor Kennedy.]
8) Le Livre de la Paix, edited by
Charity Cannon Willard, (The Hague: Mouton, 1958). [Used with the permission of
the late Professor Willard.]
9) Christine de Pizan's 'Epistre de la prison de vie humaine, edited by Angus J. Kennedy (Glasgow University French Department, 1984). [Used by
permission of Professor Kennedy.]
10) Ditié de Jehanne d'Arc, edited by Angus J. Kennedy and Kenneth Varty,
Medium Aevum Monographs, New Series 9 (Oxford: Society for the Study of
Mediaeval Languages and Literature, 1977). [Used with the permission of
Professors Kennedy and Varty.]
The works included in Release 2 are listed below in the order in which they appear in the database, together with details of the editions used.
Technical reasons have made it necessary to divide the Livre du duc des vrais amans into five parts which have been given separate but linked acronyms.
PROL | Prologue (Roy, I, xiv-xvii) |
CEBA | Cent balades (Roy, I, 1-100) |
VIRL | Virelays (Roy, I, 101-18) |
BAEF | Balades d'estrange façon (Roy, I, 119-24) |
LAYS | Lays (Roy, I, 125-45) |
ROND | Rondeaux (Roy, I, 147-85) |
JEUX | Jeux a vendre (Roy, I, 187-205) |
AUBA | Autres balades (Pluseurs balades de divers propos) (éd. Roy, I, 207-69) |
EABA | Encore aultres balades (éd. Roy, I, 271-79) |
CMPL | Complaintes amoureuses (éd. Roy, I, 281-95) |
DAMO | L'Epistre au dieu d'Amours (éd. Roy, II, 1-27) |
ROSE | Le Dit de la rose (éd. Roy, II, 29-48) |
2AMA | Le Debat de deux amans (éd. Roy, II, 49-109) |
3JUG | Le Livre des trois jugemens (éd. Roy, II, 111-157) |
POIS | Le Livre du dit de Poissy (éd. Roy, II, 159-222) |
PAST | Le Dit de la pastoure (éd. Roy, II, 223-294) |
EUST | Une Epistre a Eustache Morel (éd. Roy, II, 295-301) |
ORND | L'Oroyson Nostre Dame (éd. Roy, III, 1-9) |
15JO | Les Quinze joyes Nostre Dame (Roy, III, 11-14) |
ORNS | Une Oroyson Nostre Seigneur (éd. Roy, III, 15-26) |
EMOR | Les Enseignemens moraux (éd. Roy, III, 27-44) |
PMOR | Proverbes moraux (éd. Roy, III, 45-57) |
DVAL | Le Livre du duc des vrais amans - Livre (éd. Roy, III, 59-189) |
DVAB | Le Livre du duc des vrais amans - Balades de pluseurs façons (éd. Roy, III, 189-198) |
DVAV | Le Livre du duc des vrais amans - Virelais (éd. Roy, III, 198-201) |
DVAR | Le Livre du duc des vrais amans - Rondeaulx (éd. Roy, III, 201-203) |
DVAC | Le Livre du duc des vrais amans - Complainte (éd. Roy, III, 203-208) |
CBAD | Les Cent balades d'amant et de dame (éd. Roy, III, 209-317) |
CHLE | Le Livre du chemin de long estude (éd. Tarnowski) |
MFOR | Le Livre de la mutacion de Fortune (éd. Solente) |
FBMC | Le Livre des fais et bonnes meurs du sage roy Charles V (éd. Solente) |
ISAB | L'Epistre a la reine (ed. Kennedy) |
7PSA | Les Sept psaumes allegorisés (ed. Rains) |
LMFR | La Lamentacion sur les maux de la France (ed. Kennedy) |
PAIX | Le Livre de la paix (ed. Willard) |
PRVH | L'Epistre de la prison de vie humaine (ed. Kennedy) |
DARC | Le Ditié de Jehanne d'Arc (ed. Kennedy and Varty) |
The database does not include nine of Christine de Pizan's works,
either because copyright problems have still to be resolved with the publishers or because the work in question has
not yet been edited. These works will be incorporated into the database, as and
when it is possible to do so; they are listed below:
AVCR | L'Avision Cristine |
OTEA | L'Epistre Othea |
EROS | Les Epistres sur le 'Roman de la Rose' |
HCPA | Les Heures de contemplacion de la Passion |
CDAM | Le Livre de la cité des dames |
PRUD | Le Livre de Prudence (Le Livre de la prod'hommie de l'homme) |
FACH | Le Livre des fais d'armes et de chevalerie |
3VER | Le Livre des trois vertus (Tresor de la cité des dames) |
CPOL | Le Livre du corps de policie |
Each reference is made up of THREE or FOUR parts, as follows:
1) The volume number (where appropriate) and the page number of the scholarly edition used
2) The line number, as given in the edition
Where the lines are not numbered, as is often the case with Christine's prose works, line numbers have been supplied, each page being separately numbered.
An unnumbered title or rubric at the beginning of a work has been treated as line 0, whenever it is possible to do so. If titles or rubrics have not been included in the line numbering, they are treated as part of the line immediately following. Where the edition has no line numbers, lines containing titles or rubrics have been numbered along with the rest of the text.
3) The item number (in the case of a collection), the part and chapter number (if appropriate).
4) The label assigned to the work, a sequence of four capital letters, allocated according to the list of Labels in Alphabetical Order.
AUBA | Autres balades (Pluseurs Balades de divers propos) |
AVCR | L'Avision Cristine |
BAEF | Balades d'estrange façon |
CEBA | Cent balades |
CBAD | Cent balades d'amant et de dame |
CMPL | Complaintes amoureuses |
2AMA | Le Debat de deux amans |
PAST | Le Dit de la pastoure |
ROSE | Le Dit de la rose |
DARC | Le Ditié de Jehanne d'Arc |
EABA | Encore autres balades |
EMOR | Les Enseignemens moraux |
EUST | Une Epistre a Eustache Morel |
ISAB | L'Epistre a la reine Isabelle |
DAMO | L'Epistre au dieu d'Amours |
PRVH | L'Epistre de la prison de vie humaine |
OTEA | L'Epistre Othea |
EROS | Les Epistres sur le 'Roman de la Rose' |
HCPA | Les Heures de contemplacion de la Passion |
JEUX | Jeux a vendre |
LAYS | Lays |
LMFR | La Lamentacion sur les maux de la France |
CDAM | Le Livre de la cité des dames |
MFOR | Le Livre de la mutacion de Fortune |
FBMC | Le Livre des fais et bonnes meurs du sage roy Charles V |
3JUG | Le Livre des trois jugemens |
3VER | Le Livre des trois vertus (Le Tresor de la cité des dames) |
CHLE | Le Livre du chemin de long estude |
CPOL | Le Livre du corps de policie |
POIS | Le Livre du dit de Poissy |
DVAL | Le Livre du duc des vrais amans - Livre |
DVAB | Le Livre du duc des vrais amans - Balades de pluseurs façons |
DVAV | Livre du duc des vrais amans - Virelais |
DVAR | Le Livre du duc des vrais amans - Rondeaulx |
DVAC | Le Livre du duc des vrais amans - Complainte |
ORND | L'Oroyson Nostre Dame |
ORNS | Une Oroyson Nostre Seigneur |
PROL | Prologue |
PMOR | Proverbes moraux |
15JO | Quinze joyes Nostre Dame |
ROND | Rondeaux |
7PSA | Les sept psaumes allegorisés |
VIRL | Virelais |
15JO | Quinze joyes Nostre Dame |
2AMA | Le Debat de deux amans |
3JUG | Le Livre des trois jugemens |
3VER | Le Livre des trois vertus (Le Tresor de la cité des dames) |
7PSA | Les sept psaumes allegorisés |
AUBA | Autres balades (Pluseurs Balades de divers propos) |
AVCR | L'Avision Christine |
BAEF | Balades d'estrange façon |
CBAD | Cent balades d'amant et de dame |
CDAM | Le Livre de la cité des dames |
CEBA | Cent balades |
CHLE | Le Livre du chemin de long estude |
CMPL | Complaintes amoureuses |
CPOL | Le Livre du corps de policie |
DAMO | L'Epistre au dieu d'Amours |
DARC | Le Ditié de Jehanne d'Arc |
DVAB | Le Livre du duc des vrais amans - Balades de pluseurs façons |
DVAC | Le Livre du duc des vrais amans - Complainte |
DVAL | Le Livre du duc des vrais amans - Livre |
DVAR | Le Livre du duc des vrais amans - Rondeaulx |
DVAV | Livre du duc des vrais amans - Virelais |
EABA | Encore autres balades |
EMOR | Les Enseignemens moraux |
EROS | Les Epistres sur le 'Roman de la Rose' |
EUST | Une Epistre a Eustache Morel |
FACH | Le Livre des fais d'armes et de chevalerie |
FBMC | Le Livre des fais et bonnes meurs du sage roy Charles V |
HCPA | Les Heures de contemplacion de la Passion |
ISAB | L'Epistre a la reine Isabelle |
JEUX | Jeux a vendre |
LAYS | Lays |
LMFR | La Lamentacion sur les maux de la France |
MFOR | Le Livre de la mutacion de Fortune |
ORND | L'Oroyson Nostre Dame |
ORNS | Une Oroyson Nostre Seigneur |
OTEA | L'Epistre Othea |
PAIX | Le Livre de la paix |
PAST | Le Dit de la pastoure |
PMOR | Proverbes moraux |
POIS | Le Livre du dit de Poissy |
PROL | Prologue |
PRUD | Le Livre de prudence (Le Livre de la prod'hommie de l'homme) |
PRVH | L'Epistre de la prison de vie humaine |
ROND | Rondeaux |
ROSE | Le Dit de la rose |
VIRL | Virelais |
The standard alphabet has been adapted to take account of the usage of early fifteenth-century scribes for whom 'i' and 'y' were largely interchangeable. In the alphabet used here 'i' and 'y' are combined and come between 'h' and 'j'.
See also: Accents.
The editors of Christine de Pizan's works have adopted widely differing practices, so far as accents are concerned. While there is a high degree of consistency in the use of the cedilla, the same cannot be said of the diaeresis or acute and grave accents: thus tres, très and trés are all found, as are à and a; the diaeresis is applied erratically, even in the editions of Christine's poetry where its consistent use would have made the syllable count clear. The Alphabet is so arranged that vowels, with or without an accent, are sorted together, allowing the examples of tres, très and trés to be combined under a single headword.
The Wordlist is, strictly speaking, not a list of words, but a list of graphemes and their frequency,
since homographs have not been differentiated. Thus the examples of estre include both the
infinitive 'to be' and the substantive 'abode, dwelling'. Likewise fais, 'burden' is combined
with fais, 'deeds' and parts of the verb faire.
For these reasons the wordlist should be used with caution. It does, however, provide a convenient way
of establishing whether or not Christine's works contain a particular word or grapheme.
Before searching the Wordlist, it is important to read the section on the Alphabet.
As its name indicates, the Reverse Wordlist lists the graphemes in reverse order; it also gives the frequency with which they occur.
All the graphemes found in Christine de Pizan's works are listed in the order of the alphabet as defined. Each headword is followed by a number which indicates the frequency with which it occurs. References and contexts, limited to a maximum of 90 characters, are given for each grapheme which occurs 50 times or less; where the context extends over a single line, the break between lines is marked by the symbol '//'. For graphemes which occur between 51 and 500 times, references only are given. Where the examples are more numerous still, the first 500 examples are listed, and the list ends 'ETC.' (The total number of examples found is given after the headword.)
The Index of Names does not differentiate between personal and geographical names.
It would be useful to know whether users would prefer the index to be sub-divided,
perhaps into an Index nominum and an Index locorum.
To establish the Index of Names has proved to be anything but straightforward.
What categories of name should be included? Names of people must clearly figure in the list,
as must allegories and personifications. Although Christine's editors have marked most names
in these categories with a capital letter, allegories and personifications cause particular problems.
For example, it is often difficult to distinguish between nature, the abstract noun, and Nature, the personification or the goddess. The list of names includes, alongside examples of Fortune, Mort, Nature etc. which editors have capitalized, examples of fortune, mort, nature etc. where Christine seems to have intended some degree of personification.
Given the problems just outlined, comments about the Index of Names will be particularly welcome.
Suggestions about additional names or further examples to be included will be gratefully received,
as will comments about any words which should be excluded.