Product Description: Ovid's Art and the Wife of Bath examines how Ovid's Ars amatoria shaped the erotic discourses of the medieval West. The Ars amatoria circulated in medieval France and England as an authoritative treatise on desire; consequently, the sexualities of the medieval West are haunted by the imperial Roman constructions of desire that emerge from Ovid's text...read more

Product Description: Christine de Pizan, an Italian-born writer in French in the early 15th century, composed lyric poetry, debate poetry, political biography, and allegory. Her texts constantly negotiate the hierarchical and repressive discourses of late medieval court culture...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

Subtitled `Gender, textuality, and the medieval Aeneid ', this book follows the figure of Dido as she emerges from ancient historical and literary texts (from Timaeus and Justin to Virgil and Ovid) and circulates in medieval textual cultures. Desmond's study ranges from the discourses of Latin textual traditions, including Servius, Augustine, and John of Salisbury, to the French and English vernaculars of the Roman d'Eneas , and the work of Dante, Chaucer, Caxton and Christine de Pizan. She examines this process in the light of modern critical theory and feminism.