Marguerite de Navarre’s Heptameron: The Voice of a Queen and Her Court

 

I.                    Marguerite de Navarre: Her Life and Influence

A.     Marguerite d'Angoulême, Daughter of Charles d'Angoulême, comte d'Orléans, and Louise de Savoie, Born 1492

B.     Her Father Becomes Louis XII, King of France

C.     Marries Charles, duke of Alençon, 1509

D.     Her Brother Becomes François I, 1515

E.      Charles, duke of Alençon, Dies; François Captured 1525, Released 1526

F.      Marries Henri d’Albret, King of Navarre, 1527

G.     Dies 1549

II.                 The Late Renaissance in the Pyrenees: Humanism and War

A.     The Beginning of the Reformation and the Growth of the Secular State

B.     Politics and Succession in France

C.     A Catholic Nation and Strategic Marriages

III.               Heptameron against Decameron: Narrative as Theology and Politics

A.     The Courtly Tradition

B.     The Heptameron’s Narrative Frame: Prologue

C.     The Truth of the Stories

D.     Political and Theological Necessity

E.      The Humanism Within

IV. Story One: The Lieutenant General’s Son and Wicked Madame Saint-Aignan

A.     The Wickedest Woman in the World

B.     The Price of Sin

C.     The Anti-Boccaccio Story

V.     Stories Three and Four

A.     Saffredent’s Tale of Revenge

1.      The King of Naples

2.      His Disordered Household

B.     Story Four: Courtly Rebukes

                                                1.      Ennasuite’s Story of Attempted Rape

                                                2.      A Snubbing Worse than Death