Em defesa do saber feminino na obra A cidade das damas, de Christine de Pizan (1405)

Abstract

This thesis examines how Christine de Pizan’s The Book of the City of Ladies (1405) legitimizes women’s knowledge. The work employs an allegorical architecture (Reason, Rectitude, and Justice) and a broad catalogue of examples of notable women to establish criteria for female intellectual authority, challenging medieval misogynistic tradition and the “querelle des femmes”. The specific objectives are based on mapping the typologies of knowledge attributed to the exemplary characters (literary, political, technical/craft, and moral/theological), identifying the rhetorical strategies that structure persuasion (allegorical triad, pedagogical dialogue, reinterpretation of authorities), and demonstrating how the misogynistic Medieval tradition, especially as expressed in the Roman de la Rose, was confronted by Christine de Pizan. The methodology adopts a historical-intellectual and rhetorical-argumentative approach, based on open-access secondary sources. Findings indicate that Christine shifts essentialist explanations toward a socio-educational reading of differences, advocating for intellectual equipotentiality conditioned by access to schooling and experience. The catalogue of examples serves as both proof and pedagogical material, reordering the memory of women’s achievements around public utility, virtues, and authorship. It is concluded that the “city” functions simultaneously as a fortress, archive, and school, offering a model of “epistemic justice” (a process of repairing injustices suffered by women as subjects of knowledge) with contemporary resonance.