Although Marguerite de Navarre's unique position in sixteenth-century France has long been acknowledged and she is one of the most studied women of the time, until now no study has focused attention on Marguerite's political life. Barbara Stephenson here fills the gap, delineating Marguerite's formal political position and highlighting her actions as a figure with the opportunity to exercise power through both official and unofficial channels. Through Marguerite's surviving correspondence, Stephenson traces the various networks through which this French noblewoman exercised the power available to her to further the careers of political and religious clients, as well as her struggle to protect the interests of her brother the king and those of her own family and household. The analysis of Marguerite's activities sheds light on noble society as a whole.

Sister to the king of France, queen of Navarre, gifted writer, religious reformer, and patron of the arts--in her many roles, Marguerite de Navarre (1492-1549) was one of the most important figures of the French Renaissance. In this, the first major biography in English, Patricia F. Cholakian and Rouben C. Cholakian draw on her writings to provide a vivid portrait of Marguerite's public and private life. Freeing her from the shadow of her brother François I, they recognize her immense influence on French politics and culture, and they challenge conventional views of her family relationships. The authors highlight Marguerite's considerable role in advancing the cause of religious reform in France-her support of vernacular translations of sacred works, her denunciation of ecclesiastical corruption, her founding of orphanages and hospitals, and her defense and protection of persecuted reformists. Had this plucky and spirited woman not been sister to the king, she would most likely have ended up at the stake. Though she remained a devout catholic, her theological poem Miroir de l'âme pécheresse, a mystical summa of evangelical doctrine that was viciously attacked by conservatives, remains to this day an important part of the Protestant corpus. Marguerite, along with her brother the king, was a key architect and animator of the refined entertainments that became the hallmark of the French court. Always eager to encourage new ideas, she supported many of the illustrious writers and thinkers of her time. Moreover, uniquely for a queen, she was herself a prolific poet, dramatist, and prose writer and published a two-volume anthology of her works. In reassessing Marguerite's enormous oeuvre, the authors reveal the range and quality of her work beyond her famous collection of tales, posthumously called the Heptaméron. The Cholakians' groundbreaking reading of the rich body of her work, which uncovers autobiographical elements previously unrecognized by most scholars, and their study of her surviving correspondence portray a life that fully justifies Marguerite's sobriquet, "Mother of the Renaissance."

A new exploration of the complexities and resolutions at play in the writings of Marguerite de Navarre, offering insights into how her work reflected the turbulence, uncertainties, and assurances of her historical period. Marguerite de Navarre was a Renaissance princess, diplomat, and mystical poet. She is arguably best known for The Heptameron, an answer to Boccaccio's Decameron, a brilliant and open-ended collection of short stories told by a group of men and women stranded in a monastery. The stories explore love, desire, male and female honour, individual salvation, and the iniquity of Franciscan monks, while the discussions between the storytellers enact and embody the tensions, ideologies, and prejudices underlying the stories. Marguerite herself was deeply involved in the debates and conflicts of her time. Her work reflects the turbulence, uncertainties, and assurances of her historical period, as the Renaissance re-imagined the past and the Reformation re-made the church, and represents her original and sometimes provocative position on these questions. This book presents The Heptameron and its investigations into gender relations, the nature of love, and the nature of religious faith in the context of the intellectual, religious, and political questions of the sixteenth century, setting it alongside Marguerite's other writings: her poetry, plays, and diplomatic letters. In chapters on communities, religion, politics, gender relationships, desire, and literary technique, it explores the complexities and resolutions of Marguerite's writing and her world. It aims to offer a guide to the critical tradition on Marguerite's work along with new readings of her texts, revealing both the historical specificity of her writing and its continuing relevance.

This study reconstructs for the first time Marguerite of Navarre s leadership of a broad circle of nobles, prelates, humanist authors, and commoners, who sought to advance the reform of the French church along evangelical (Protestant) lines. Hitherto misunderstood in scholarship, they are revealed to have pursued, despite persecution, a consistent reform program from the Meaux experiment to the end of Francis I s reign through a variety of means: fostering local church reform, publishing a large corpus of religious literature, high-profile public preaching, and attempting to shape the direction of royal policy. Their distinctive doctrines, relations with major reformers including their erstwhile colleague Calvin involvement in major Reformation events, and the impact of their unsuccessful attempt are all explored.

Most widely read today as the author of the "Heptaméron," Marguerite de Navarre (1492-1549) was known in her lifetime as a deeply religious, mystical poet. Sister of the King of France and wife of the King of Navarre, her deeds and writings expressed and sought to promote a living faith in Christ, based on the gospels, and a vision for the renewal and reform of the Church in line with the teachings of French Evangelicals such as Lefèvre d’Étaples, Guillaume Briçonnet, and Gérard Roussel. In this volume, eleven eminent scholars offer new appreciations of Marguerite’s extraordinary life and rich and diverse literary œuvre, including, in addition to her short-story collection, dialogues, mirror poems, plays, songs, and an allegorical prison narrative. Contributors include, along with the editors, Philip Ford, Isabelle Garnier, Jean-Marie Le Gall, Reinier Leushuis, Jan Miernowski, Olivier Millet, Isabelle Pantin, Jonathan A. Reid, and Cynthia Skenazi.

Born to a noble family in Tournai, Marie Dentière (1495-1561) left her convent in the 1520s to work for religious reform. She married a former priest and with her husband went to Switzerland, where she was active in the Reformation's takeover of Geneva. Dentière's Very Useful Epistle (1539) is the first explicit statement of reformed theology by a woman to appear in French. Addressed to Queen Marguerite of Navarre, sister of the French king Francis I, the Epistle asks the queen to help those persecuted for their religious beliefs. Dentière offers a stirring defense of women and asserts their right to teach the word of God in public. She defends John Calvin against his enemies and attacks the hierarchy of the Roman Catholic Church. Her Preface (1561) to one of Calvin's sermons criticizes immodesty and extravagance in clothing and warns the faithful to be vigilant. Undaunted in the face of suppression and ridicule, this outspoken woman persisted as an active voice in the Reformation.

Marguerite de Navarre (1492–1549), the sister of the French king François I, composed the Heptaméron as a complex collection of seventy-two novellas, creating one of the first examples of realistic, psychological fiction in French literature. These novellas, framed by debates among ten storytellers, all noble lords and ladies, reveal the author’s desire to depart from the purely masculine voice of the age. Cholakian contends that this Renaissance text is characterized by feminine writing. She reads the text as the product of the author’s personal experience. Beginning her study with the rape narrative in the autobiographical novella 4, she examines how the Heptaméron interacts with male literary traditions and narrative conventions about gender relations. She analyzes such words as rape, and honor, noting how they are defined differently by men and women and how these differences in perception affect the development of both plot and character.