L'Heptaméron
(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.
Marguerite de Navarre. L'Heptaméron
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).
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 in the efficacy of good works leads to disaster and death. Both the stories and the discussions often center on differing attitudes toward sin and virtue, 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 Press, 1993) edited by John D. Lyons and Mary B. McKinley
PROLOGUE
Read a transcription of the Prologue in the Gordon copy of this edition (with links to digital image of each page)
STORY 19:
Read a transcription of Story 19 in the Gordon copy of this edition (with links to digital image of each page).
Internet Resources
For a complete transcription of the Heptameron, see the Gallica site (Bibliothèque Nationale de France), which has reproduced the edition prepared by Michel François (Bordas, 1991) in text format.
Renaissance-France.org: Portail de la Renaissance Française-Marguerite de Navarre — Listen to sound recordings of excerpts from stories 6, 11, 20, 40 and 60 of the Heptaméron.