Hagiography in Marguerite De Navarre's Heptaméron
Saints and Debates in Renaissance France
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Paperback / softback
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Publisher: University of Delaware Press
ISBN: 9781644534007
Number of Pages: 176
Published: 31/12/2025
Width: 15.6 cm
Height: 23.5 cm
Marguerite de Navarre was one of the most educated and powerful women of Renaissance Europe. The Heptaméron, her celebrated collection of tales and debates, offers readers invaluable insights into diverse aspects of sixteenth-century French society. Scholars of Marguerite have written extensively on the complexities of her religious thought, but the influence of Catholic narrative tradition on the Heptaméron has been underexplored. Through an analysis of Marguerite’s tales together with literary works, religious writings, and visual images of the saints, Hagiography in Marguerite de Navarre’s Heptaméron reveals the important relationship between the Queen of Navarre’s text, hagiographic tradition, and various sixteenth-century controversies. By contextualizing the Heptaméron within these theological and literary debates, this volume illustrates how Marguerite both borrowed from and revised hagiography to lend greater authority to her writing, advocate on behalf of women, and craft an innovative response to polemics about gender, religion, and the cult of saints.
- Contents
- Introduction: Marguerite, the Saints, and Renaissance Debates
- Chapter 1: Beyond Boccaccio: Saints’ Vitae and the Heptaméron
- Chapter 2: The Prologue, Pilgrimage, and Prophetesses in the Heptaméron
- Chapter 3: Violence, Sufferings, and the Persecution of Saintly Women
- Chapter 4: Saintly Women Confined and Isolated
- Chapter 5: The Holiness of Saint Francis, the False Sanctity of the Franciscans, and Ungodly Clerics and Women
- Conclusion: The Final Tale, Revising Hagiography, and Offering Hope
- Notes
- Bibliography
- About the Author