The Book of the City of Ladies

The Book of the City of Ladies is an allegorical prose work by the medieval French writer Christine de Pizan, composed in French, incorporating Latin-influenced syntax and rhetorical conventions, and believed to have been completed around 1405. In the work Christine, addressed by three allegorical figures named Reason, Rectitude and Justice, constructs an imagined city built from and populated by women of historical, biblical and legendary distinction, assembling their stories as a direct rebuttal to the misogynist arguments of contemporary and earlier literature, most notably Jean de Meun's continuation of the Roman de la Rose. The book is Christine de Pizan's second major prose work, following her writing career as one of the first European women to earn her living by authorship, and it stands alongside her companion volume The Treasure of the City of Ladies and her poem on Joan of Arc among her most celebrated works. It is now regarded as a foundational text in the European tradition of writing in defense of women, notable both for its systematic rebuttal of misogynist literary tradition and for its early articulation of women's collective intellectual and moral worth.