Due to her death in 1549, Marguerite de Navarre never completed her masterwork of seventy-two short stories, the Heptameron, which differs radically in style, subject matter, and approach from her earlier pious and spiritual literary output of theater and poetry. The Heptameron focuses primarily on transgressive human behaviors such as deception, seduction, rape, incest, and corruption. In her waning years after retiring from the court, Marguerite clearly used written expression to examine those unflattering traits of human character which deviated from the spiritual path she had taken and written about throughout her life; but the reasons for this abrupt shift in Marguerite's writing have long puzzled scholars, who often interpret her novellas either as negative exempla that reinforce the morality of her poetry, or as pure entertainment.Thanks to the psychoanalytical theories formulated and developed in the twentieth century by Sigmund Freud (father of psychoanalysis, 1856-1939), J.L. Moreno (creator of psychodrama and sociometry, 1892-1974), Ivan Boszormenyi-Nagy (family psychologist, 1920-2007), Anne Ancelin Schützenberger (founder of transgenerational psychoanalysis 1919-) Nicholas Abraham (theorist of cryptonymy, 1919-1975), and Maria Torok (theorist of cryptonymy, 1925-1998) we have new tools that allow us to gain a different perspective on what may have motivated Marguerite to write the Heptameron and why recurring themes (i.e., marital infidelity, imprisonment, and clerical misdeeds) appear throughout her work. When analyzing the Heptameron in the light of these theories, it becomes clear that Marguerite focuses on unresolved family patterns transmitted from one generation to the next. These transgressive themes coincide with traumas that Marguerite herself experienced, which she reflects on, works through, and embeds within her text.Using Boccaccio's Decameron as a model, Marguerite creates intratextual storytellers who discuss, debate, and philosophize about human behaviors. Writing thus enables her to manipulate through fiction the unresolved conflicts and anxieties, both conscious and unconscious, that she was powerless to control in reality. The storytellers express and explore Marguerite's beliefs about life. By reinterpreting these frame discussions and Marguerite's transgressive subject matter in the light of the aforementioned social and psychological theories; I analyze the link between Marguerite's family heritage, her life, and her writing.

Étudier les plaisirs féminins dans la littérature française de la Renaissance, c’est d’abord faire le constat d’une pluralité de représentations qui se regroupent autour d’un même enjeu, celui de l’honnêteté. En raison d’une forte tradition misogyne, il est en effet difficile pour une femme de concilier cet impératif social avec le plaisir. Les textes que nous étudions (récit, poésie, littérature d’idées) sont toutefois portés par une dynamique entre voix féminines et voix masculines, qui contribue à faire émerger un discours nouveau sur le plaisir féminin que nous nous proposons d’étudier. La première partie étudie les plaisirs dans l’espace conjugal. Celui-ci fait de la volupté féminine, dans la relation entre époux et dans l’adultère, à la fois une nécessité et une déviance. La deuxième partie s’attache à l’espace social et interroge les plaisirs de cour : les échanges amoureux influencés par l’amour courtois, le néo-platonisme et le pétrarquisme, et les divertissements collectifs, de la danse à la conversation. La troisième partie, consacrée à l’espace de soi, se dégage de la morale sociale dont les deux premières parties sont tributaires pour proposer une réflexion sur le plaisir comme accomplissement de soi dans la maternité, le savoir, la spiritualité et l’écriture. / The study of feminine pleasures in the sixteenth-century French literature leads to a multiplicity of representations. All of them coincide with the idea of honesty. Because of a strong misogynist ideology, women could hardly reconcile these social and moral requirements with the notion of pleasure. Nevertheless, the texts studied in this thesis (narratives, poems, essays and treatises) show a dynamic between feminine and masculine voices that gives way to new discourses on pleasure. The first part focuses on pleasure within marriage. Be it within their relationship with their spouses or in adultery, feminine sensual pleasure was considered both an honest need and a déviance. The second part deals with social pleasures: public amusements (from dance to conversations) as well as encounters between lovers, which were influenced by amour courtois, neoplatonism, and, petrarquism. The third part, dedicated to the self, breaks away from the social morals attached to the first two parts in order to study pleasure as self-accomplishment through motherhood, knowledge, spirituality and writing.

La thèse porte sur la poésie de Marguerite de Navarre et Vittoria Colonna. Elle se concentre sur la codification de leurs poésies spirituelles et examine comment des formes littéraires traditionnelles sont combinées avec des idées religieuses nouvelles et transformées. Pour ce faire, la partie théorique de cette thèse développe une conception du code qui est ensuite appliquée aux poèmes des deux poètes. Dans une partie historique, la thèse explore l’évangélisme en Italie. Elle examine s’il existe en Italie un code évangélique comparable au code évangélique français. La thèse examine ensuite les sonnets spirituels de Vittoria Colonna. Ces poèmes sont édités et traduits en annexe. L’étude analyse également le poème "Le Balladin" de Clément Marot. Le corpus des textes analysés de Marguerite de Navarre comprend les rondeaux, les dizains ainsi que les chansons spirituelles. La thèse se focalise sur l’analyse de la codification et de l’interdépendance de la forme littéraire et de la pensée religieuse. / The thesis deals with the poetry of Marguerite of Navarre and Vittoria Colonna. It focuses on the codification of their spiritual poetry and examines how traditional literary forms are combined with new religious ideas and how they are transformed. To do this, the theoretical part of this thesis develops a conception of code that is then applied to the poems of the two poets. In a historical part, the thesis explores evangelism in Italy. It examines whether there is an evangelical code in Italy comparable to the French evangelical code. The thesis then examines the spiritual sonnets of Vittoria Colonna. These poems are edited and translated in an appendix. The study also analyses Clément Marot's poem "Le Balladin". The corpus of texts by Marguerite of Navarre includes the rondeaux, the dizains and the chansons spirituelles. The thesis focuses on the analysis of the codification and of the interdependence of literary form and religious thought.

Étudier les plaisirs féminins dans la littérature française de la Renaissance, c’est d’abord faire le constat d’une pluralité de représentations qui se regroupent autour d’un même enjeu, celui de l’honnêteté. En raison d’une forte tradition misogyne, il est en effet difficile pour une femme de concilier cet impératif social avec le plaisir. Les textes que nous étudions (récit, poésie, littérature d’idées) sont toutefois portés par une dynamique entre voix féminines et voix masculines, qui contribue à faire émerger un discours nouveau sur le plaisir féminin que nous nous proposons d’étudier. La première partie étudie les plaisirs dans l’espace conjugal. Celui-ci fait de la volupté féminine, dans la relation entre époux et dans l’adultère, à la fois une nécessité et une déviance. La deuxième partie s’attache à l’espace social et interroge les plaisirs de cour : les échanges amoureux influencés par l’amour courtois, le néo-platonisme et le pétrarquisme, et les divertissements collectifs, de la danse à la conversation. La troisième partie, consacrée à l’espace de soi, se dégage de la morale sociale dont les deux premières parties sont tributaires pour proposer une réflexion sur le plaisir comme accomplissement de soi dans la maternité, le savoir, la spiritualité et l’écriture.

Étudier les plaisirs féminins dans la littérature française de la Renaissance, c’est d’abord faire le constat d’une pluralité de représentations qui se regroupent autour d’un même enjeu, celui de l’honnêteté. En raison d’une forte tradition misogyne, il est en effet difficile pour une femme de concilier cet impératif social avec le plaisir. Les textes que nous étudions (récit, poésie, littérature d’idées) sont toutefois portés par une dynamique entre voix féminines et voix masculines, qui contribue à faire émerger un discours nouveau sur le plaisir féminin que nous nous proposons d’étudier. La première partie étudie les plaisirs dans l’espace conjugal. Celui-ci fait de la volupté féminine, dans la relation entre époux et dans l’adultère, à la fois une nécessité et une déviance. La deuxième partie s’attache à l’espace social et interroge les plaisirs de cour : les échanges amoureux influencés par l’amour courtois, le néo-platonisme et le pétrarquisme, et les divertissements collectifs, de la danse à la conversation. La troisième partie, consacrée à l’espace de soi, se dégage de la morale sociale dont les deux premières parties sont tributaires pour proposer une réflexion sur le plaisir comme accomplissement de soi dans la maternité, le savoir, la spiritualité et l’écriture.

The following document is a meta-commentary on the article, "La misogynie à visage féminin: Hircan's Role as Marguerite's Anti-feminist Voice in the Heptaméron (VII & XLIX)," co-authored by Dr. Robert J. Hudson and myself, which will shortly be submitted for publication. It contains an annotated bibliography of all our primary and secondary sources and an account of writing the article. Our article examines what Marguerite de Navarre, the sixteenth-century French Renaissance author of the Heptaméron (a collection 72 nouvelles, all supposedly true stories being told by a group of ten devisants to one another), intended by her inclusion of the misogynist, Hircan. As we demonstrate, current scholarships views Marguerite as one of the first authors to create a space for women in literature, and further, that the Heptaméron was meant to serve the didactic purpose of forming young ladies' perspectives and behavior. Given this, Hircan, whose debasing views on women are shared in each of his stories and interlocutory commentaries, seems an odd devsiant for Marguerite to create; and so, we ask, why did she include him? We conclude that Hircan serves as Marguerite's straw man for the worst aspects of sixteenth-century French society, allowing her to subvert him and demonstrate how Hircan (and by extension, French society's) views towards women ought to be considered inappropriate. To support our reading, we start by explaining the historical context, demonstrating that the attitudes Hircan represents did indeed exist and were prevalent. We then show how Marguerite undermines Hircan: first, by making him so grotesque that the reader finds his views repugnant, and second, in allowing other devisants—especially Parlamente and Oisille—to use superior arguments to overturn his perspectives. Finally, we demonstrate how Marguerite uses Hircan's own tales against him, by having his fellow devisants interpret his stories completely differently from his womanizing and debasing purposes—instead find praise for women in them.

Cette anthologie rassemble des poèmes spirituels et féminins du XVIe siècle pour proposer un parcours neuf dans la poésie de la Renaissance en sélectionnant des textes de femmes, en contrepoint aux textes d’hommes généralement mis en avant par l’histoire littéraire, et en choisissant la veine spirituelle qui se démarque de la veine amoureuse et pétrarquiste souvent mieux connue. Nous avons sélectionné des œuvres catholiques et des œuvres réformées, afin de donner la plus large vision possible de la vie spirituelle française du XVIe siècle. Notre anthologie s’accompagne d’une étude du corpus pour justifier nos choix et pour élucider les critères d’écriture au féminin, la notion de spiritualité et les pratiques des formes poétiques, tout en proposant un état de la recherche, prenant en compte les avancées les plus significatives en matière d’éditions de textes de femmes. / This anthology gathers spiritual poems written by women from the sixteenth century, suggesting a new way of discovering the poetry from the Renaissance ; indeed, we have chosen texts written by women in preference to texts written by men which have usually been strongly emphasized throughout literary history, and also by choosing the spiritual inspiration which is different from the much better-known romantic Petrarchan inspiration. We have made a selection among Catholic works as well as reformed works, in order to show what the sixteenth century French spiritual life really was. We have added a study of the corpus to our anthology in order to justify our choice and to clear up the different important points in women's way of writing, this idea of spirituality and the use of the different forms of poetry, while mentioning research results at the same time, taking into account the most significant progress which has been made concerning the publishing of women's works.

<p>Jag vill i den här uppsatsen beskriva hur sexualitet och genus konstrueras, befästs och utmanas i Margareta av Navarras verk <em>Heptameron</em>. Jag utgår från Judith Butlers och Thomas Laqueurs queerteoretiska perspektiv och visar hur de olika maktdiskurserna kristendom, aristokrati, patriarkalism och nyplatonism påverkar och påtvingar olika konstruktioner av sexualitet<strong> </strong>och genus, och kan konstatera att alla dessa diskurser bygger på<strong> </strong>en normerande och<strong> </strong>normaliserad heterosexualitet som ständigt för tillbaka avvikelserna från denna norm, hos såväl devisanterna som i de två noveller jag studerat, till en binär könskategorisering. Huvudfokus ligger på tvetydigheten hos begrepp som man, kvinna, och fullkomlig kärlek. Jag menar att just avsaknaden av slutgiltiga definitioner av sådana begrepp i verket visar på att det inte går att finna något essentiellt ursprung eller någon slutgiltig definition av dem. Det är just därför den heterosexuella normen måste iscensättas gång på gång.</p><p>Jag menar dock att man kan konstatera att det finns en skillnad i fråga om de bakomliggande diskursernas gestaltning i ramberättelse där de slås fast och i novellerna där de problematiseras, vilket också påpekats av Bernard. Det finns med andra ord ett större utrymme för avvikande från sexualitets- och genusnormer i <em>Heptamerons </em>noveller, medan ramberättelsens funktion tycks vara att föra dem tillbaka till ordningen. Likväl sker en ständig upprepning av den heterosexuella normen både hos devisanterna och i novellerna, en upprepning som tyder på att heterosexualiteten inte är vare sig given eller naturlig utan iscensatt.</p> / <p>In this study I am analyzing how categories of sexuality and gender are represented in Marguerite de Navarre’s <em>Heptameron</em>. I have narrowed the object of study down to two of the seventy-two novellas; number forty-seven and forty-three, and to four of the ten devisants; Oisille, Parlamente, Hircan and Dagoucin. The theoretical frame<strong> </strong>is taken from Judith Butlers <em>Gender Trouble. Feminism and the Subversion of Identity</em> (1990) and <em>Undoing Gender</em> (2004) and from Thomas Laqueurs <em>Making Sex. Body and Gender from the Greeks to Freud</em> (1990). Butler’s aim is to deconstruct terms such as feminine and masculine, which function as imagined normalization categories due to power relations. In <em>Undoing Gender </em>she asks: “If I am a certain gender, will I still be regarded as part of the human? Will the ‘human’ expand to include me in its reach? If I desire in certain ways, will I be able to live?” These questions are of great importance for my study, which presents how the categories of sexuality and gender can be negotiated in the equalized frame Marguerite de Navarre creates for her ten devisants and novellas. At the same time I assess how every attempt to go beyond the boundaries of norms fails due to a norm of heterosexuality, which constrains the binary categories of man and woman.</p><p>There are four main discourses by which the heterosexual norm is internalized by the devisants in <em>Heptameron</em>: the Christian, the aristocratic, the patriarchal and the neo-platonic. I suggest that each of the four devisants that I have studied represents one of these discourses. Since there are no definitive lines or definitive conclusions reached in the discussions among them it would be more correct to say that all the discourses effect all of the devisants to some extent, but<strong> </strong>that all the devisants act through a main discourse when he/she express his/her individual opinions.</p><p>When the devisants in the frame leave it to the reader to come to a conclusion about right or wrong behavior for men and women, they are still rather set in their own opinions and, also, quite unforgiving. It is my contention that the novellas create more room for negotiations of the sexual and gender roles than the frame. In novella forty-three a woman acts within the role of the active, hence masculine, part of a love affair, and novella forty-seven tells the story of a <em>parfaicte</em> <em>amytié</em> between two men. But it is also obvious that these attempts to stress and break the norms of sexuality and gender are unsuccessful, once again due to the fixed norm of heterosexuality which constrain the binary categories of man and woman. In the novellas these very failures put the norms under stress, since they point out the very problem with the determination of sexual and gender categories which were prevalent during the Renaissance.</p><p>I conclude my results by returning to Butler’s question above; “If I desire in certain ways, will I be able to live?” In <em>Heptameron </em>one can always find a chance to try a different way, but in the end only the heterosexual desire in which man and woman are in dichotomy survives.</p>

Jag vill i den här uppsatsen beskriva hur sexualitet och genus konstrueras, befästs och utmanas i Margareta av Navarras verk Heptameron. Jag utgår från Judith Butlers och Thomas Laqueurs queerteoretiska perspektiv och visar hur de olika maktdiskurserna kristendom, aristokrati, patriarkalism och nyplatonism påverkar och påtvingar olika konstruktioner av sexualitet och genus, och kan konstatera att alla dessa diskurser bygger på en normerande och normaliserad heterosexualitet som ständigt för tillbaka avvikelserna från denna norm, hos såväl devisanterna som i de två noveller jag studerat, till en binär könskategorisering. Huvudfokus ligger på tvetydigheten hos begrepp som man, kvinna, och fullkomlig kärlek. Jag menar att just avsaknaden av slutgiltiga definitioner av sådana begrepp i verket visar på att det inte går att finna något essentiellt ursprung eller någon slutgiltig definition av dem. Det är just därför den heterosexuella normen måste iscensättas gång på gång. Jag menar dock att man kan konstatera att det finns en skillnad i fråga om de bakomliggande diskursernas gestaltning i ramberättelse där de slås fast och i novellerna där de problematiseras, vilket också påpekats av Bernard. Det finns med andra ord ett större utrymme för avvikande från sexualitets- och genusnormer i Heptamerons noveller, medan ramberättelsens funktion tycks vara att föra dem tillbaka till ordningen. Likväl sker en ständig upprepning av den heterosexuella normen både hos devisanterna och i novellerna, en upprepning som tyder på att heterosexualiteten inte är vare sig given eller naturlig utan iscensatt. / In this study I am analyzing how categories of sexuality and gender are represented in Marguerite de Navarre’s Heptameron. I have narrowed the object of study down to two of the seventy-two novellas; number forty-seven and forty-three, and to four of the ten devisants; Oisille, Parlamente, Hircan and Dagoucin. The theoretical frame is taken from Judith Butlers Gender Trouble. Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (1990) and Undoing Gender (2004) and from Thomas Laqueurs Making Sex. Body and Gender from the Greeks to Freud (1990). Butler’s aim is to deconstruct terms such as feminine and masculine, which function as imagined normalization categories due to power relations. In Undoing Gender she asks: “If I am a certain gender, will I still be regarded as part of the human? Will the ‘human’ expand to include me in its reach? If I desire in certain ways, will I be able to live?” These questions are of great importance for my study, which presents how the categories of sexuality and gender can be negotiated in the equalized frame Marguerite de Navarre creates for her ten devisants and novellas. At the same time I assess how every attempt to go beyond the boundaries of norms fails due to a norm of heterosexuality, which constrains the binary categories of man and woman. There are four main discourses by which the heterosexual norm is internalized by the devisants in Heptameron: the Christian, the aristocratic, the patriarchal and the neo-platonic. I suggest that each of the four devisants that I have studied represents one of these discourses. Since there are no definitive lines or definitive conclusions reached in the discussions among them it would be more correct to say that all the discourses effect all of the devisants to some extent, but that all the devisants act through a main discourse when he/she express his/her individual opinions. When the devisants in the frame leave it to the reader to come to a conclusion about right or wrong behavior for men and women, they are still rather set in their own opinions and, also, quite unforgiving. It is my contention that the novellas create more room for negotiations of the sexual and gender roles than the frame. In novella forty-three a woman acts within the role of the active, hence masculine, part of a love affair, and novella forty-seven tells the story of a parfaicte amytié between two men. But it is also obvious that these attempts to stress and break the norms of sexuality and gender are unsuccessful, once again due to the fixed norm of heterosexuality which constrain the binary categories of man and woman. In the novellas these very failures put the norms under stress, since they point out the very problem with the determination of sexual and gender categories which were prevalent during the Renaissance. I conclude my results by returning to Butler’s question above; “If I desire in certain ways, will I be able to live?” In Heptameron one can always find a chance to try a different way, but in the end only the heterosexual desire in which man and woman are in dichotomy survives.