Christine de Pizan's Letter of Othea to Hector (Library of Medieval Women)

Christine de Pizan (1364-?1430) was the first French woman poet to make her living by the pen, and the first female interpreter of classical myths; she held enormous power in the French court and influenced late medieval culture in France and in England in a number of ways. The Letter of Othea to Hector, her most popular work, is a series of a hundred verse texts about a mythological figure or moment, with prose moral glosses explaining how to readthe myth in order to improve human character. It is translated here with introduction, notes, and interpretative essay.