A cidade das damas: o gênero como análise das representações femininas (des)construídas por Christine de Pizan (1405)

Abstract

The research starts from the possibilities aligned to Gender Studies for an analysis of a female medieval literary work. To demonstrate how a literature work can provide historical studies with rich ways of understanding the past. Gender was used as a theoretical and methodological contribution to the assignment by understanding how the process of deconstruction of negative representations associated with women took place, in The Book of the City of Ladies, by Christine de Pizan (1405). The writer was a woman who lived from the production of her texts, as her life was marked by access to education, a fact which instigates the debate about the place of women in French society in the 15th century. Thus, the work was marked by the boundaries between female and male narratives of gender identity constructions. To comprehend these limits, this analysis aims to demonstrate how the field of gender is performative, and that is why the writer was able to trace her criticisms in defense of women, even when inserted in a historical context marked by rigidity.