Flaming words: verbal violence and gender in premodern Paris.

Imagine words such as hate and territory and the like -- unbanished still as they always would be -- wait and are waiting under beautiful speech. To strike.

Eavan Boland In a Time of Violence

Accuser, blamer, soupconner, maudire, railler, condamner, voila ce qu'il y a au bout

George Sand

Histoire de ma vie

During France's first literary polemic, Christine de Pizan attacked a fictional text for its misogynistic representations with the following claim: the Roman de la rose "would better be engulfed in fire than crowned with the laurel" (mieulx lui affiert ensevelissment de feu que couronne de lorier).(1) Such a claim conjures up a scene of book-burning. It suggests a milieu where an absolutist control of language reigned, where any speech or writing deemed contrary to the norms was not tolerated. With such a statement, Christine appears to advocate a form of censorship commonly associated with the premodern world. Her fierce critique of Jean de Meun's misogynistic Rose seems to lead toward flames. Read referentially, it consigns the book to a bonfire -- the fate of other texts in early fifteenth-century Paris.(2)

In a polemical context, this fiery scene reads differently. While Christine's claim may indeed refer to book-burning, it also constitutes an act of language. It entails a particular type of performative language that can be labelled negatively as insult, or worse still, as outright condemnation. Rather than represent the physical act of destroying the Rose, Christine's words enact the severest judgment of it through a figure of speech. In terms of the primordial trope of fire, they are meant to burn.(3) Her polemics perform what we call now flaming.(4)