Incoherent Texts? Storytelling, Preaching, and theCent nouvelles nouvellesin Marguerite de Navarre’sHeptaméron21*

Abstract

AbstractTo analyze Marguerite de Navarre’s response to the misogynist francophone novella tradition, this article asks how material provided by oldernouvellesis reorganized in theHeptaméron, blurring both normative definitions of masculinity and femininity and the lines between framed novellas and other genres. This article describes Marguerite’s use of nonfictional sources as well asCent nouvelles nouvelles26. Visual iconographic transformations in theCent nouvelles nouvellesare converted in theHeptaméroninto textual and intergeneric transformations. In the distance betweenCent nouvelles nouvelles26’s elaborate crossdressing farce andHeptaméron21, which blends romance, pardon request, and martyr’s tale, one perceives the differences in gendered thought and rhetorical strategy separating Marguerite from her anonymous predecessors.