Around 1399, Christine composed L'Épistre au Dieu d'amours, an early polemical defense of women in courtly love debates.
Around 1399, Christine de Pizan composed L'Épistre au Dieu d'amours (Letter of the God of Love), a poem structured as a formal complaint addressed to Cupid on behalf of women who had been mistreated or slandered by male lovers and writers.
The work directly challenged the misogynistic tropes common in courtly literature of the period, particularly targeting the objectification and disparagement of women found in popular texts. By adopting the voice of authority — the God of Love himself — Christine cleverly used an established literary convention to deliver serious social critique.
This poem is considered one of the opening salvos in what would become known as the Querelle des Femmes (Debate about Women), a centuries-long literary controversy over the nature, virtue, and proper treatment of women. Christine's intervention was notable because, unlike earlier defenses of women written by men, hers came from a woman directly asserting her own perspective and lived experience.
Its composition helped cement Christine's reputation as a serious intellectual willing to engage prominent male authors on questions of gender and morality, foreshadowing her later, more famous defenses of women in The Book of the City of Ladies.