Where It All Goes Down
15th Century France/ Christine de Pizan's Mind
This book starts out as a typical autobiographical story. Christine de Pizan talks as though she's going to tell us about something that happened to her just the other day. As the story begins, we find ourselves in her library. She writes,
One day as I was sitting alone in my study surrounded by books on all kinds of subjects, devoting myself to literary studies, my usual habit, my mind dwelt at length on the weighty opinions of various authors whom I had studied for a long time. (1.1.1)
Ok, cool. So far, so realistic.
But then these three magical Ladies show up, the whole story seems to transport us into some kind of metaphorical, mental world that is half-real, half-dreamscape.
By the end of the book, we've seen Christine de Pizan build the City of Ladies. It sure sounds like a physical place, as de Pizan says,
I have built it up with beautiful palaces and many fair inns and mansions. I have populated it for your sake with noble ladies and with such great numbers of women from all classes that it is already completely filled. (2.68.11)
But at the same time, we have to ask how real this city actually is. How could Christine build an entire city by herself with the help of only a few magical ladies? Does de Pizan want us to think of this setting literally, or is the City of Ladies a metaphor for her book as a whole?
Hey, you could argue for hours about just how real or imaginary the setting of this book is. It's a book, so ultimately the setting is fantasy even if we're supposed to suspend our disbelief when it comes to a woman building a city by hand.
There are positives for believing in the physical reality of this city, just as there are bonuses for believing in the reality of Hogwarts. The City of Ladies sounds like a pretty sweet town, after all. But there are also definite bonuses for understand the City itself to be contained within the book: this would mean that de Pizan is engaging in some well-before-her-time metafiction.
So we'll go ahead and say that it could go either way, depending on which evidence you highlight in the text and depending on what makes The Book of The City of Ladies a cooler read for you personally.