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Chivalry may be dead, but its handbooks are au courant. English translations of The Rule of the Templars (J. M. Upton-Ward) and Geoffroi de Charny's Book of Chivalry (R. W. Kaeuper/E. Kennedy) appeared in 1992 and 1996 respectively. Now enters the lists-with much applause-the genre's queen, highly revered in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, the handbook of Christine de Pizan, a prolific humanist of the French court c.1400 and the Liebling of medieval feminists. Christine's work is in capable hands: the late Sumner Willard, the translator, taught medieval history at West Point and Charity Willard, responsible for the Introduction and notes, is Christine's biographer (1984) and editor of two of her works (1958,1989). Hitherto Christine's Book was accessible only in William Caxton's 1489 translation (ed. A. T. P. Byles, 1932).
The translation is based on the Willards' forthcoming edition of a fifteenth-century Brussels manuscript (Bibl. Roy. 10476). Their edition will offer the first authentic text: Caxton interpolated his edition; Antoine Verard's French edition (1488) altered the title and omitted Christine's name, though charging Verard with male chauvinism (pp. 1-2) is unjustified: the manuscript he...