Cité des Dames – Lore

A city built of women's stories, founded on Christine de Pizan's allegory of 1405 and taken literally: every stone is a life, and it holds only as long as someone reads it. Eleven women – from a pharaoh to a fossil hunter – keep the Cité against the Gloss, the commentary that creeps in from the margin and rewrites names into footnotes. Reading is the only currency, the throne stands empty, and the city must decide who it is for.

I – The Founding: The Field of Letters – How the City Was Begun

SURVEY ENTRY – Bureau of Impossible Geography FIELD AGENT: Dr. Eleanor Hartley, Senior Cartographer SHARD: CITÉ DES DAMES STATUS OF AGENT ON ARRIVAL: Refused entry I was refused at the Gate. I put it first because it is the only fact in this report I can vouch for completely. The Gate stands at th...

I – The Founding: The Stones of the City – Women Who Became Walls

FIELD NOTES – Dr. Eleanor Hartley LOCATION: The city wall, Quarter of Reason SUBJECT: The Law of the Stone Every stone in the Cité is a woman. I had read this in the Bureau's preliminary file and taken it as poetry. It is a building regulation. A story becomes a stone when it is told whole. Whole ...

I – The Founding: The Law of the Likeness – How the Women Are Seen

FIELD NOTES – Dr. Eleanor Hartley LOCATION: The Studio of Likenesses, Quarter of Justice SUBJECT: Appearance of the inhabitants I have postponed this entry because I did not believe my own eyes, and an observer who does not believe her own eyes is a poor instrument. I will describe what I see and l...

I – The Founding: The Three Quarters and the Right to Light

FIELD NOTES – Dr. Eleanor Hartley LOCATION: Walking survey, all quarters, and the Margin SUBJECT: Geography; time; the edge A survey requires a base line. I chose the main street of the Quarter of Reason, from the Salon to the Observatory, and walked it with a chain and a lamp. The chain was useful...

II – The Living City: The Salon of Reason – Where Ideas Have Weight

FIELD NOTES – Dr. Eleanor Hartley LOCATION: The Salon of Reason, Quarter of Reason SUBJECT: The Disputations and their rule In 1405 Lady Reason came to Christine carrying a mirror. Whoever looks into it, Christine wrote, sees herself as she truly is. The mirror hangs above the central fireplace of ...

II – The Living City: The Scriptorium – The Hours of Reading

FIELD NOTES – Dr. Eleanor Hartley LOCATION: The Scriptorium, Quarter of Justice SUBJECT: The Hours; the Listening Wall The oldest institution in the Cité is a timetable. On the first night, Hildegard von Bingen – who has been seeing what she calls the Living Light since she was three years old, an...

II – The Living City: The Endowment of Hours – What the City Is Worth

FIELD NOTES – Dr. Eleanor Hartley LOCATION: The House of Endowed Hours, Quarter of Rectitude SUBJECT: Economy The Bureau's survey template asks for currency, principal exports and the means of exchange. I have put a line through all three and written: reading. The Cité has one scarce resource, and...

II – The Living City: The College of Letters – How to Read a Stone

FIELD NOTES – Dr. Eleanor Hartley LOCATION: The College of Letters, Quarter of Reason; the Pavilion of Borrowed Names SUBJECT: Instruction; the question of invented women Every newcomer to the Cité takes one course, and it is taught in a kitchen. The College of Letters is a convent cloister from N...

III – The Wound and the Word: The Quarry of Names – The Stones Without Names

FIELD NOTES – Dr. Eleanor Hartley LOCATION: The Quarry of Names, Field of Letters; the Masons' Terraces SUBJECT: Where stones come from When the Gate accepts a name, a stone has to be broken for her. It comes from the Quarry, where the river has cut the Field of Letters down to its bones. The clif...

III – The Wound and the Word: The Blazing World – What the Engine Calculates

FIELD NOTES – Dr. Eleanor Hartley LOCATION: The Observatory of the Blazing World, Quarter of Reason SUBJECT: Recovery; the curve The Observatory is named for Margaret Cavendish's Blazing World, the book of 1666 in which a woman passes through a portal at the North Pole into another world and become...

III – The Wound and the Word: The Gloss – What Writes in the Margin

FIELD NOTES – Dr. Eleanor Hartley LOCATION: The Margin; the Unnamed Archive; the lowest layer of the Quarry SUBJECT: The adversary In a medieval book the text sits in the middle of the page and the gloss sits around it: commentary, explanation, the voice of authority telling the reader what the tex...

IV – The Open Question: The Gate of Justice – Who May Enter

FIELD NOTES – Dr. Eleanor Hartley LOCATION: The Gate of Justice; the Hall of Declarations SUBJECT: The canon question Christine's city admitted the virtuous. She was writing against a book that called women wicked, and she answered it with a catalogue of women who were not: queens who ruled well, w...