Marguerite de Navarre (French: Marguerite d'Angoulême, Marguerite d'Alençon; 11 April 1492 - 21 December 1549), also known as Marguerite of Angoulême and Margaret of Navarre, was the princess of France, Queen of Navarre, and Duchess of Alençon and Berry. As an author and a patron of humanists and reformers, she was an outstanding figure of the French Renaissance. Marguerite wrote many poems and plays. Her most notable works are a classic collection of short stories, the Heptameron, and a remarkably intense religious poem, Miroir de l'âme pécheresse (Mirror of the Sinful Soul).
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 dearly 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, Tom Conley, Michel Jeanneret, Cathleen M. Bauschatz, François Cornilliat and Ullrich Langer, Mary B. McKinley, Philippe de Lajarte, Andre Tournon, Daniel Russell, François 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.
In the early 1500s five men and five women find themselves trapped by floods and compelled to take refuge in an abbey high in the Pyrenees. When told they must wait days for a bridge to be repaired, they are inspired - by recalling Boccaccio's Decameron - to pass the time in a cultured manner by each telling a story every day. The stories, however, soon degenerate into a verbal battle between the sexes, as the characters weave tales of corrupt friars, adulterous noblemen and deceitful wives. From the cynical Saffredent to the young idealist Dagoucin or the moderate Parlamente - believed to express De Navarre's own views - The Heptameron provides a fascinating insight into the minds and passions of the nobility of sixteenth century France.
DIVTen men and women engage in a storytelling battle of the sexes that abounds in murder, adultery, remorse, and revenge, all set in 16th-century France. Translation by Arthur Machen. /div
These ten magical stories are primarily set in Pittsburgh-area river towns, where Italian American women and girls draw from their culture and folklore to bring life and a sense of wonder to a seemingly barren region of the Rust Belt. Each story catapults the ordinary into something original and unpredictable. A skeptical journalist scopes out the bar where the town mayor, in seemingly perfect health, is drinking with his buddies and celebrating what he claims is the last day of his life. A woman donates her dead mother’s clothes to a thrift shop but learns that their destiny is not what she expected. A ten-year-old girl wrestles with the facts of life as she watches her neighbor struggle to get pregnant while her teenage sister finds it all too easy. A high school girl hallucinates in a steamy hospital laundry room and discovers she can see her coworkers’ futures. A developer’s wrecking ball is no match for the legend of Giovanna’s green thumb in the title story “Giovanna’s 86 Circles.” Quirky and profound, Corso’s magical leaps uncover the everyday poetry of these women’s lives. Finalist for the John Gardner Fiction Book Award Selected for “Best Short Stories of 2005” in Montserrat Review Best Books for Regional Special Interests, selected by the American Association of School Librarians, and Best Books for General Audiences, selected by the Public Library Association Sons of Italy National Book Club Selection
In the year 1500, Queen Margaret of Navarre wrote her "recipe for a happy life," which includes ingredients such as patience, pastimes, repose and peace, pleasant memory and hope, and love's magic drops. Picking up these themes, Marie West King has selected passages from literature that expand on Queen Margaret's suggestions. Represented are Ralph Waldo Emerson ("A day for toil, an hour for sport"), George Washington ("Labor to keep alive in your breast that little spark of celestial fire, called Conscience"), Plato ("Self conquest is the greatest of victories"), and William Shakespeare ("Love comforteth, like sunshine after rain"). Readers will find that this simple recipe still stands the test of time.
NOW A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE! If you think you know Ophelia and Hamlet's story, think again... "A spellbinding tale of love, murder, and revenge." -- VOYA As ambitious and witty as she is beautiful, Ophelia is quick to catch the eye of the captivating prince Hamlet. Their love blossoms in secret, but bloody deeds soon turn Denmark into a place of madness, and Ophelia may be forced to choose between her relationship and her own life. In desperation, she devises a plan to escape from Elsinore Castle forever... with one very dangerous secret. Ophelia takes center stage in this bold and thrilling reimagining of Shakespeare's famous tragedy, the story of a young woman falling in love, searching for her place in the world, and finding the strength to survive.
