Christine de Pizan and the Fight for France

Adams, Tracy

Published by Penn State University Press

Adams, Tracy.
Christine de Pizan and the Fight for France.
Penn State University Press, 2014.
Project MUSE.muse.jhu.edu/book/34963.

For additional information about this book

https://muse.jhu.edu/book/34963

Access provided at 31 Mar 2020 14:07 GMT with no institutional affiliation

 Acknowledgments

This monograph came into being during my year as a Eurias Senior Fellow at
the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Studies, 2011–12. My heartfelt thanks
to the Eurias Fellowship Program and to everyone at NIAS, a place of perfect
tranquillity and stimulating intellectual exchange, not to mention spectacular
cuisine, for making that year possible. In addition to the warm, competent
staff and my colleagues there, I would like to acknowledge Rector Aafke Hulk
and research planning and communication director Jos Hooghuis for their
friendship and encouragement. Next, I would like to thank my colleagues
and friends in the International Christine de Pizan Society. As all scholars of
Christine de Pizan know, research on the poet is possible because of the codi-
cological and editing work carried out by the members of the Christine com-
munity. Thanks to all of you.
Special thanks to James Laidlaw, Kerryn Olsen, Glenn Rechtschaffen, and
Christine Adams, who read all or parts of this study, and to Julia Sims Hold-
erness for the many sparkling insights on Christine that she has shared with
me over the years. I am grateful as always to Steve Nichols for his continued
willingness to read and advise. Thanks, too, to Jeff Richards for his scholarly
generosity, and to Gilles Lecuppre for patiently responding to my questions
about fourteenth- and fifteenth-century France (any mistakes in this study, of
course, are my own). I am grateful to Ellie Goodman at Penn State Press for
taking on this project and helping me to realize it, and to the two anonymous
readers for their careful readings and insights. I owe a large debt to copyeditor
Suzanne Wolk for her painstaking work in preparing this study for publica-
tion. Many thanks to the people and the institutions that allowed me to pres-
ent and receive feedback on this study: Peggy McCracken at the University of
Michigan, Virginie Greene at Harvard University, and Cynthia Brown at the
University of California, Santa Barbara. Thanks to the University of Auck-
land for granting me research leave in 2011–12, during which I completed the
first draft of this monograph, and to our interlibrary loan staff, and, espe-
cially, our subject librarian, Mark Hangartner.

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 Acknowledgments

Thanks to my “family” in Paris, Tanguy, René, Nadine, Chérine, and Jean-

Jacques, for giving me a home away from home, and to Sylvie for teaching
me French and many other things. Endless gratitude to Glenn, Danny, and
Elf for their patience with the long hours that I put into revising once I
returned from NIAS.
Finally, in January 2012, while working on this study, I had the privilege of
meeting, electronically, a woman whose spirit and courage in the face of the
illness that ultimately took her from her family and many friends will humble
and inspire me for the rest of my life. Although I would not presume to call
her my friend, in deference to those who truly enjoyed that right, in the beau-
tiful words that she wrote to me I continue to feel her presence. I believe, like
Christine de Pizan, that through words we can cultivate friendships across
time and space. This is for you, Helena. I had hoped to hand it to you in
person, but I will do that in a better place.

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