Critical tales : new studies of the Heptameron and early modern culture

Resource Information

The work Critical tales : new studies of the Heptameron and early modern culture represents a distinct intellectual or artistic creation found in University of Liverpool. This resource is a combination of several types including: Work, Language Material, Books.

Label

Critical tales : new studies of the Heptameron and early modern culture

Title remainder

new studies of the Heptameron and early modern culture

Statement of responsibility

edited by John D. Lyons and Mary B. McKinley

Contributor

• Lyons, John D., 1946-
• Lyons, John D., 1946-
• McKinley, Mary B

Subject

• Characters and characteristics in literature
• French language -- Early modern, 1500-1700 -- Rhetoric
• Literary form -- History -- 16th century
• Love stories, French -- History and criticism
• Marguerite, Queen, consort of Henry II, King of Navarre, 1492-1549
• Narration (Rhetoric) -- History -- 16th century
• Women and literature -- France -- History -- 16th century

Language

eng

Summary

"Appearing in print for the first time in 1558, the book that we now know as the Heptameron is the work of Marguerite, Queen of Navarre. Left incomplete, but clearly modeled on Boccaccio's Decameron, the Heptameron consists of a frame narrative and seventy-two tales told by five men and five women characters in the shady meadow at Notre Dame de Sarrance." "As John D. Lyons and Mary B. McKinley contend in their introduction to this volume, the tales of the Heptameron portray the conflicts, ruptures, and upheavals that agitated early modern French society. They present a forum in which different elements of Renaissance and Reformation culture meet and, at times, collide. Contradictory suppositions about men and women are easily discerned behind almost all of the stories, and the discussions among the fictional storytellers represent attitudes both feminist and misogynist, masculinist and misandrous. Less oppositional are the religious conflicts among the storytellers; some are less ardently religious while others are concerned with the corporeal rather than the spiritual." "The stories of the Heptameron are often cautionary tales about the corruption of the late medieval church, about decadent priests and monks, or about the unfortunate faithful whose belief in the efficacy of good works for salvation leads to disaster and death. The conflicts of the Reformation loom over the Heptameron not just as the origin of its ideological tensions, but also as a prominent symptom of the larger, related disruptions that marked sixteenth-century Europe." "Provocative and wide-ranging, appealing to specialists in numerous fields, Critical Tales is the first collective volume of studies in English on the Heptameron. The authors - Robert D. Cottrell, Hope Glidden, Marcel Tetel, Donald Stone, Tone Conley, Michel Jeanneret, Cathleen M. Bauschatz, Francois Cornilliat and Ullrich Langer, Mary B. McKinley, Philippe de Lajarte, Andre Tournon, Daniel Russell, Francois Rigolot, Paula Sommers, and Edwin M. Duval - present different approaches to Marguerite de Navarre's tales, dealing with such topics as confession, rape, the impact of printing on knowledge and narrative, narrative theory, and androgyny. The contributors to Critical Tales, like the storytellers of the Heptameron, are not afraid to challenge the critical establishment and one another. The book will be of interest to students and scholars of French and comparative literature and women's studies."--BOOK JACKET

Cataloging source

DLC

Index

index present

Literary form

non fiction

Nature of contents

bibliography