Heptameron Critical Essay | Critical Essay by Timothy Hampton

Critical Essay by Timothy Hampton

SOURCE: “On the Border: Geography, Gender and Narrative Form in the Heptaméron,” in Modern Language Quarterly, Vol. 57, No. 4, December, 1996, pp. 517-44.

In the following essay, Hampton reads the Heptameron as a reflection of the shifting political and ideological ground of the Renaissance.

Gallia est omnis divisa in partes tres.

—Caesar

Stories and the State

The Heptaméron (1559) takes place on disputed territory. Marguerite de Navarre's prologue to her collection of framed tales focuses on the adventures of a group of aristocrats who have come to take the waters at Cauterets, in the Pyrenees. Cauterets lies in Marguerite's own kingdom of Navarre, and Navarre is located on the border between the two most bitter enemies in sixteenth-century Europe, the Spain of Charles V and the France of Marguerite's brother, Francis I. Indeed, Navarre was one of the several spots on the edges of “France” that seemed unable to stay “French.” The...
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