Studies of women's roles in the secular literary world, as patrons, authors, readers, and characters in secular literature. This second volume of proceedings from the `Women and the Book' conference, held at St Hilda's College, Oxford in 1993, brings together fifteen papers dealing with women's experience in the secular literary world. It covers the whole variety of roles women might take, as patrons, authors, readers, and characters in secular literature; encompassed in its range are well-known characters, real and fictional, such as Christine de Pisan and the Wife of Bath, and the more obscure but no less fascinating topic of women in Chinese medieval court poetry. Like its predecessor Women, the Book, and the Godly(Brewer, 1995), this volume illuminates the world of medieval women with carefulscholarship and attention to sources, producing new readings and new materials which shed fresh light on an increasingly important field of study. Contributors: PATRICIA SKINNER, PHILIP E. BENNETT, JENNIFER GOODMAN, CHARITY CANNON-WILLARD, BENJAMIN SEMPLE, ANNE BIRRELL, JEANETTE BEER, MARK BALFOUR, CAROL HARVEY, HEATHER ARDEN, KAREN JAMBECK, JULIA BOFFEY, JENNIFER SUMMIT, MARGARITA STOCKER

Translation of Christine's autobiographical Vision, both dealing with her own life and career, and offering a possible solution to the troubled state of France at the time. Christine de Pizan's The Vision is both a powerful contemporary response to the chaos that would eventually precipitate Henry V's invasion of France, and a fascinating view of the author's own progress as a woman reader, writer, and public commentator in the late Middle Ages. As a long-time intimate of the French court, Christine here analyses the origins of the civil strife in which France found itself in 1405, and offers a possible future, callingfor its resolution in the voice of a prophet. Alongside her documentation of the difficulties faced by a medieval woman left widowed early in life, she also explores issues of gender and authorship, interpretation and misinterpretation in her remarkable career as a writer and advisor of princes. Glenda McLeod is Professor Emerita, Gainesville State College; Charity Cannon Willard was Professor Emerita, Ladycliff College.

It is unexpected in any era to find a woman writing a book on the art of warfare, but in the fifteenth century it was unbelievable. Not surprisingly, therefore, Christine de Pizan's The Book of Deeds of Arms and of Chivalry, written around 1410, has often been regarded with disdain. Many have assumed that Christine was simply copying or pilfering earlier military manuals. But, as Sumner Willard and Charity Cannon Willard show in this faithful English translation, The Book of Deeds of Arms and of Chivalry contains much that is original to Christine. As a military manual it tells us a great deal about the strategy, tactics, and technology of medieval warfare and is one of our most important sources for early gunpowder weapon technology. It also includes a fascinating discussion of Just War.

Since the end of the fifteenth century, The Book of Deeds of Arms and of Chivalry has been available primarily through Antoine Verard's imprint of 1488 or William Caxton's 1489 translation, The Book of the Order of Chivalry. Verard even suggested that the work was his own translation of the Roman writer Vegetius, making no mention of Christine 's name. Caxton attributed the work to Christine, but it is impossible to identify the manuscript he used for his translation. Moreoever, both translations are inaccurate. The Willards correct these inaccuracies in a clear and easy-to-read translation, which they supplement with notes and an introduction that will greatly benefit students, scholars, and enthusiasts alike. Publication of this work should change our perception both of medieval warfare and of Christine de Pizan.