Search results for ""Author Marguerite de Navarre""

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.

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Marguerite de Navarre (1492-1549) was the sister and wife to kings and a pivotal influence in sixteenth-century France. An astute politician and diligent humanist, she was a champion of gender equality and the evangelical reform movement, which recognized that the clergy was more concerned with maintaining the church's power than ministering to the faithful. As the years passed and the glitter of life at court waned, however, Marguerite came to realize her true vocation: writing."Selected Writings" brings together a representative sampling of Marguerite's varied works, most of it never before translated into English, enabling Anglophone readers to enjoy the full breadth of her writings for the first time. From verse letters and fables to mythological-pastoral tales, from spiritual songs to a selection of novellas from the Heptameron, the wide range of works included here will reveal Marguerite de Navarre to be one of the most important writers - male or female - of sixteenth-century France.

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