The Heptameron: Selected Tales

by Margaret of Navarre, Stanley Appelbaum (Editor), Arthur Machen (Translator)

Like the exuberant storytellers of Boccaccio's Decameron and Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, the ten men and women who narrate the tales of The Heptameron offer captivating glimpses of a vanished world. They have taken refuge in a Pyrenean abbey, where they pass their time in a storytelling battle of the sexes. Ranging from highly romantic to downright bawdy, and from deeply spiritual to profane, these tales form a vivid portrait of life and attitudes during the transition from medieval to modern times in sixteenth century France.
These tales reputedly originated at the royal court of France and are attributed to Marguerite de Navarre, the learned sister of Francis I. Several of the characters attest to the truth of their stories, and indeed, many of the incidents they describe were verified by latter-day scholarship. Real or imagined, the gripping tales of The Heptameron—brimming with murder, adultery, remorse, and revenge—continue to enthrall readers in the twenty-first century.

224 pages, Paperback

First published May 26, 2006

About the author

Marguerite de Navarre, also known as Marguerite d'Angoulême and Margaret of Navarre, was the queen consort of King Henry II of Navarre. As patron of humanists and reformers, and as an author in her own right, she was an outstanding figure of the French Renaissance. Samuel Putnam called her "The First Modern Woman".

Reviews

[Rebecca · Rating 4 out of 5]

Well, this is a selection of 40 of the 72 or so tales, but if they are representative of the whole I found the majority of them a little stark, dreary and sordid. Marguerite had read the Decameron (which I have not yet) and was inspired to pen her Heptameron. I hope this doesn't reflect on Boccaccio's work, which I am expecting to be more in line with the Canterbury Tales.

Chastity sure was a precious thing back in the day. All the admirable women suffer privation, ostracism or death rather than part with it. If the translation does her writing any justice I rather admire Marguerite's style, which is ornate by today's standards but still surprisingly clear. However, my impression is that the plots that appealed most to the average 16th C reader revolved around female chastity and male concupiscence, actually a minor twist on today's sexual obsession which lacks the ancient drama from current overuse.

Tale 20 is especially dark, exhibiting a prurient fascination with incest: a mother gets caught in her own ill-conceived (to use a term) scheme to foil her son's desire for a serving girl, gets pregnant by him and produces a daughter. Eventually, the son meets his sister-daughter, her background all unbeknownst to him, falls in love and marries her. The mother suffers her original sin all in silence.

All in all, I enjoyed getting an insight into what passed for literary entertainment several centuries ago ...