Benjamin Semple
Christine’s Dream Body: Functions and Transformations of the Body in Dream-Vision Narratives of Christine de Pizan”
In Christine de Pizan’s dream narratives, the body plays a prominent role. Christine insists in these works on forms of experience, such as sense perception and sensation, for which a body is required. For example, in the Chemin de Long Estude, Christine persistently uses the verb “voir”. This sense, which is a property of the body, is the chief means by which the protagonist achieves knowledge. The process of acquiring knowledge through vision reaches its culmination when Christine arrives in the firmament. So extreme is the importance of sense experience at this level that Christine wishes her entire body could be transformed into eyes: « tant ot desir de savoir / Et congnoistre et appercevoir / Toutes les choses de cel estre, / Que bien voulsisse, s’il peut estre, / Que tous mes membres fussent yeulx / Devenus, pour regarder mieulx » (Chemin, Tarnowski edition, 1809-1814). The body also is the medium through which sensations are received. As Christine rises on the ladder of “Imagination,” she refers repeatedly to the sensation of heat as she rises toward the sun. As the narrative unfolds, her body also evolves, acquiring both more vigor and increased tolerance for acute sensations (see in particular Chemin, 1718-1726; 1799-1800). The body can also place limits on Christine, however. Because Christine remains in a body, her movements are limited to the physical world: in particular, her body prohibits her from entering into the crystalline heaven where God, the angels, and the saints reside. The Sibyl tells her: « Car ci dessus n’iras tu pas; / Il ne te loit passer un pas / Oultre ce ciel; tant que tu portes / Ce corps, closes te sont les portes » (Chemin 2035-2038).
In the Advision-Christine, sense perception (vision in particular) once again plays a prominent role in the narrative, particularly in the first and second parts. In this work, another aspect of the body is its close association with sexual difference. As Christine dreams of the moment when her asexual “esprit” is joined to her body, she emphasizes that this moment of embodiment is also the moment when sexual identity is established. At the same time, she introduces a complex notion of how sexual identity is only one component of embodiment. She explains that the body is a form, whereas the matter that actualizes this form, rather than the form itself, gives rise to sexual difference: « [Nature] mon esprit prent, si le fiche ens, et tout en la maniere que aux corps humains donner fourme acoustumé avoit, tout mesla ensemble et ainsi cuire me laissa par quantité de temps tant que ung petit corps humain me fut parfaict. Mais comme le voulsist ains celle qui la destrempe avoit faicte, a laquel cause se tient et non au mole, j’aportay sexe femmenin » (Advision, Reno & Dulac edition, p. 14). The implication is that Christine, possessing a body that is human and not simply female, participates in a universal experience of humanity; in addition, however, she traverses life as a gendered individual, due to the way in which her human form has been actualized in its material state.
The importance of the body in these dream works is even more striking because the dream as a genre did not require Christine to heed the restrictions verisimilitude would have enjoined on her in more reality-based narrative genres. Nevertheless, she chooses to emphasize the body’s presence, its experience, its value, and its limitations in her dream narratives. Without trying to anticipate too much the conclusions to which this paper could lead, four avenues of inquiry strike me as particularly inviting at this point.
1. A first avenue of inquiry would examine the allegorical implications of Christine’s emphasis on her embodied state in her dreams. For example, the symbolic opposition between walking/climbing versus flying is rich in potential allegorical significance. In both the Chemin and the Advision, Christine evokes flight as a mode of transportation for human beings (Chemin, 1584-1594; Advision, p. 12). However, in the Chemin, she underscores the transgressive character of human flight. As suggested by the exemplum of Icarus in Chemin 1727-1736, flight violates the boundaries of human capacities. Though the negative attitude toward flight is more subtle in the Advision, Christine’s reference to previous dreams in which her body has taken flight may be intended to evoke the tradition of the “vol nocturne.” This tradition gave flight a negative connotation because it associated it with witchcraft and Satanism. In Christine’s dreams, a consequence of her body is to keep her resolutely bound to the earth. When she does rise above the plane of the earth, it is only by means of steps and ladders. These are humanly devised implements to ascend skyward which seem, for Christine, to respect natural limits.
2. A second avenue of inquiry is intertextual. By looking at other incursions of the body in dream-vision narratives (for example, the presence of Dante’s body in the Commedia), points of comparison can emerge for a better understanding of Christine’s treatment of this theme.
3. A third avenue of inquiry is epistemological. The dream-vision tradition prior to Christine exhibits an ongoing concern about the impact of the body-soul relationship on the knowing subject. The problem of the types of knowledge obtainable or unobtainable to an “embodied” soul frequently arises in Christian epistemology. Christine seems to emphasize the richness of knowledge that can be obtained in an embodied state, while at the same time acknowledging many of the traditional limits.
4. A fourth avenue of inquiry is gender-oriented: is Christine’s emphasis on her in-the-body dream experiences reflective of a refusal to marginalize the body as an aspect of her individual experience and, moreover, of human existence in general? Is she refusing the version of body-soul dualism transmitted to her by male authors (though not necessarily rejecting the notion of such a dualism per se, as it is a deeply ingrained conceptual framework of her culture)?