Female Autobiographical Discourse in the Works of Christine de Pizan

This work is devoted to the study of the representation of women's writing experience in the work of the 15th century French writer Christine de Pizan. The purpose of the study is to study the ways of self-representation and self-expression of women in the literature of the Late Middle Ages through the analysis of such texts by Christine de Pizan as “Epistle of Othea to Hector”, “The Mutations of Fortune””, “The Book of the City of Ladies”, “The Vision of Christine”. To achieve the goal, the following tasks were set: based on a comparison of the works of Christine de Pizan, to try to recreate the story of her life as she herself imagined it, and to identify the features of female autobiographical discourse in the works of Christine de Pizan. The methodological basis of the study is post-structuralist analysis, as well as gender and axiological approaches. Autobiographical discourse in the works of Christine de Pizan has the features of “pseudo-autobiographicism” inherent in French authors of the 14th and early 15th centuries: Christine, as an author, unites a “writer-poet” and a “writer-hero” in order to independently create the basis for the perception of her narratives reader, which demonstrates his new status as a person at the turn of the era, moving from a theocentric perception of the world to an anthropocentric one. This is also illustrated by the fact that Christina is the main character of almost all of her works. When analyzing her autobiographical material in such works as “Epistle of Othea to Hector”, “The Mutations of Fortune”, “The Vision of Christina” and “The Book of the City of Women” we see a clear gender marking and the text is filled with the concepts of “masculine” and “feminine”. In self-identification, she goes from the “daughter of Thomas de Pizan” and the “widow of Etienne de Castel” to gaining subjectivity and creating the status of the woman writer Christine de Pizan. From the analysis of lexical units associated with the female gender in “The Book of the City of ladies” the importance of the idea of “feminine” at the level of language, as well as the presence of female apology in the work, becomes obvious. This emphasizes the importance of introducing a new norm of "feminine" and increasing the visibility of women in culture. For Christine, the introduction of autobiographical text became a way to achieve a personal "feminine" self. She takes a step towards inventing a new model for women's autobiography, using images of holy women to change stereotypes and affirmation of female subjectivity. This demonstrates her desire to liberate herself from the framework of “masculine” discourse and form an alternative idea of ​​female identity. Further, making this a political statement, Christine de Pizan explores gender identification in "The Book of the City of Ladies", giving new meanings to women's biographies and affirming women's dignity in the Christine community, thus seeking to free themselves from the constraints of “masculine” discourse.