Description: Christine de Pizan (ca. 1364-ca. 1421) is Europe's first professional woman writer. She wrote an astonishing body of work in many genres, including lyric poetry, allegorical dream visions, history, political treatises, and biography.
Brief description: Kevin Brownlee is Professor of Romance Languages at the University of Pennsylvania. He is the author of Discourses of the Self: Autobiography and Literary Models in Christine de Pizan and Poetic Identity in Guillaume de Machaut. His edited works include Rethinking the "Romance of the Rose"; Text, Image, Reception; The New Medievalism; and Discourses of Authority in Medieval and Renaissance Literature.