Virtue and Poison... Catalogs of Women from Antiquity to the Renaissance

Virtue and Poisons traces the history of a previously neglected literary genre, the women's catalog, from its origins in Greece and Rome through the late Middle Ages, revealing the crucial importance of these catalogs as cultural documents documenting the development of the Western concept of women. These indexes were simple lists of heroines of the past, sometimes described in lengthy biographies, sometimes given only their names. The heroines of the catalogs often appeared in familiar images – faceless mothers of great men, glamorous seductresses, humble wives, abused victims of love, and strong, brilliant women. Written by some of the finest writers of the ages, these catalogs served important functions. By stereotypically defining women, these catalogs embedded stereotypes in the collective consciousness, and by clarifying appropriate and inappropriate female behavior, they strengthened the connection between literature and morality in the late Middle Ages. Despite the repetitive nature of this literary genre, the catalogs were extremely flexible, as they were able to embody different, even contradictory, views on femininity, bringing the past as a reference, or reinterpreting it in an attempt to link femininity to changing cultural values. Thus, in addition to being a means of transmitting knowledge, this literary form could be used to challenge authority, hiding behind its evocation, and presenting new models. Macleod examines a wide range of catalogues, including those of Homer, Hesiod, Virgil, Ovid, Juvenal, Plutarch, St. Jerome, and Jean de Mont, but pays particular attention to Boccaccio's De claris mulieribus and Chaucer's Legend of Good Women. She then shows how this tradition ultimately produced the first major defense of women in Christine de Pizan's Cité des Dames. This book will be of interest to scholars of classical studies, medieval scholars, Renaissance and feminist studies scholars, and anyone interested in the misogynistic tradition in the West and the reactions it has provoked.