Haralambidou, P;
(2020)
The Female Body Politic: Enacting the Architecture of The Book of the City of Ladies.
Architecture and Culture
, 8
(3-4)
pp. 385-406.
10.1080/20507828.2020.1794146.
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Abstract
This visual essay and explanatory text presents my practice-led research focusing on two works by medieval author Christine de Pizan. Conflating the act of writing a book–a thesis against institutional misogyny–with the construction of an imaginary city, the first work, The Book of the City of Ladies, 1405, has been seen as a proto-feminist manifesto. I focus on the under-researched architectural and urban allegory depicted in the text, which imagines a utopia inhabited solely by women and constructed for them by a woman and on the manuscript's accompanying illuminations displaying three different stages of the construction of the city. Inspired by Aristotle’s Politics and revisiting the ancient Greek metaphor, by which a state or society and its institutions are conceived of as a biological human body, in The Book of the Body Politic, 1404, de Pizan offers her version of a medieval political theory, which I connect with her allegorical city.
| Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Title: | The Female Body Politic: Enacting the Architecture of The Book of the City of Ladies |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| DOI: | 10.1080/20507828.2020.1794146 |
| Publisher version: | http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/20507828.2020.1794146 |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | This version is the author accepted manuscript. For information on re-use, please refer to the publisher’s terms and conditions. |
| Keywords: | Christine de Pizan, architecture, feminist city, body politic, allegory, practice-led research, digital film |
| UCL classification: | UCL UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS > Faculty of the Built Environment UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS > Faculty of the Built Environment > The Bartlett School of Architecture |
| URI: | https://discovery-pp.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10116518 |
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