Abstract
In Heptaméron 31, Marguerite de Navarre portrays a lascivious “Cordelier” or Franciscan who takes over a matron’s household during her husband’s absence, kills her servants, and disguises the woman as a monk before abducting her. Despite its surface resemblance to Rutebeuf’s “Frère Denise,” which also unveils a Franciscan’s lechery, Marguerite’s narrative is not a simple anticlerical satire. Within it we find a critique of the over-trusting husband, metaphors of censorship, an inquest into the dialectics of silence and (in)sight, a foregrounding of the victims’ body language, and analogies between the body politic and the body of the family. With these tools Marguerite folds into her nouvelle an allegory of reading a cautionary tale about the dangers of mistaking outward “works” for true godliness and an histoire tragique with political overtones that figure a crisis of authority between Reform theology’s “two kingdoms,” or secular and sacred governance, in sixteenth-century France.
Original language | English (US) |
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Pages (from-to) | 53-92 |
Number of pages | 40 |
Journal | Renaissance and Reformation |
Volume | 38 |
Issue number | 2 |
State | Published - 2015 |
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- History
- Visual Arts and Performing Arts
- Philosophy
- Music
- Literature and Literary Theory
- History and Philosophy of Science