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Gordon 1560.M35
(Click
on the call number to view the digital facsimile of
the book.)
Marguerite, Queen, consort of Henry II, King of Navarre,
1492-1549
L'Heptameron des nouuelles de tresillustre
et tresexcellente Princessse Marguerite de Valois,
Royne de Nauarre:/ remis en son vray ordre, confus
au parauant en sa premiere impression: & dedie
a tresillustre & tresvertueuse Princesse Ianne,
Royne de Nauarre, par Claude Gruget Parisien.
A Paris: Par Benoist Preuost..., 1560.
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| Published in Paris by Benoist Preuost
in 1560, this copy bears the signature on the title
page of Thomas Smith, Queen Elizabeth's ambassador
to France. The inside front cover bears the notation
"Ham Court.". Norma Levarie identifies the
title page of this edition of the Heptameron as "one
of the most fortunate examples of the workings of
a lusher fantasy" in the design of title pages
in the French Renaissance (The Art and History of
Books, p. 196).
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About the Heptameron
"Appearing in print for the first time in 1558, the
book that we now know as the Heptameron represents
in microcosm the conflicts, tensions, and beliefs
of early modern French society as viewed from one
part of the court. The 'tales of the queen of Navarre,'
as Brantôme called the work, present a forum
where different elements of Renaissance and Reformation
culture meet and, at times, collide. Often the encounters
are idealogical. The stories and discussions of the
Heptameron depict confrontations based on,
among other elements, gender. Contradictory suppositions
about women emerge repeatedly from the stories and
discussions as the devisants or fictional storytellers--five
men and five women--delineate attitudes both feminist
and misogynist. At the same time, similarly conflicting
notions about men emerge to be debated. Whether echoing
the late medieval querelle des femmes, the
contemporary querelle des amyes, the evolving
currents of Neoplatonism and Petrarchism, or the attitudes
toward sexual roles put forth in Reformation polemics,
deeply felt beliefs about gender inform and animate
the Heptameron.
Ideological confrontations in the Heptameron
often echo evangelical efforts at church reform. Here,
conflicts among the storytellers are less oppositional,
for even if some seem more fervent in their religious
ardor than others and some more concerned with the
corporal than with the spiritual, none of them advocated
a theological postion opposed to that of the evangelical
reformers. The stories the devisants tell are
often cautionary tales conveying their hostility and
dismay about the state of the Catholic church: decadent
priests and monks, most often lubricious and venal;
unfortunate Christians whose belief int he efficacy
of good works leads to disaster and death. Both the
stories and the discussions often center on differing
attitudes toward sin and virute, alienation and reconciliation,
eros and caritas, pleasure and honor--alternatives
that the storytellers and their characters present
as conflictual states and values within which they
must negotiate a tenable place in their fictional
world. If some have found a haven of tranquillity
in the steadfast convictions of their evangelical
faith, others are still playing out restless scenarios
of unsatisfied desire. The climate of unrest, menace,
and hostility that characterizes the prologue also
portrays the world of the Heptameron in general,
the physical world from which the storytellers flee
and to which they wait to return, and their overall
view of the human condition as well. The conflicts
of the Reformation loom over the Heptameron
as a prominent symptom of larger, related disruptions
and new departures that marked mid-sixteenth-century
Europe."
--from Critical Tales: New Studies of
the Heptameron and Early Modern Culture
(Philadelphia: U of Pennsylvania P, 1993) edited
by John D. Lyons and Mary B. McKinley
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PROLOGUE
Read an html transcription
of the text of the prologue in the
Gordon copy of this edition (with links to digital
image of each page)
STORY 19:
Read an html transcription
of the text of story 19 in the Gordon
copy of this edition (with links to digital image
of each page).
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Internet Resources
For a complete transcription of the Heptameron, see the Gallica site (Bibliothèque Nationale de France), which has reproduced the edition prepared by François Michel (Bordas, 1991) in text format (“documents en mode texte”). http://gallica.bnf.fr
Portail Multimédia de Renaissance-France.org: Listen to sound recordings of excerpts from stories 6, 11, 20, 40 and 60.
http://www.renaissance-france.org/multimedia/pages/pagmultimedia.html
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