“The book of the city of Ladies”: a novel of (anti)thesis

Abstract

The resignification of views inherent to stories that are fossilized in society and that concern particular events or groups has always been hard work, since the morality arising from role models deemed as righteous and natural, within a certain context, must be reconstructed. This is what occurs in The City of the Ladies (1401), by Christine de Pizan, which deconstructs pre-established theses regarding the role of women in the Middle Ages that are supported by renowned authors and by the biblical interpretation of Medieval men of the parables. Therefore, with the aim of broadening the reader’s view, the use of theses and antitheses is observed as reevaluations of role models and, hence, of the morals imbued in them, which have not changed for centuries.