The interesting thing about this, as I mentioned before, is that back then, comedy was a male-dominated genre. Since they have to wait for the storm to pass, someone suggests sharing a tale every day to entertain the others until they can return home safely.Īs it’s established at first, the idea is to entertain themselves, so most of the stories are funny. A group of people (five women and five men) are stranded in a town after a terrible storm has washed away the main roads.
The structure and the approach are pretty much the same as in Boccaccio’s classic. Fortunately, the original version survived, and we can now enjoy it just as she envisioned it (well, minus the 28 stories she didn’t get to write). Inspired by Boccaccio’s Decameron, Marguerite’s text is a compilation of 72 short stories first published by Pierre Boaistuau (a renowned humanist) posthumously in 1558 (nine years after her death) under the name of Histoires des amants fortunés in a highly edited version. The text we’re going to talk about today is The Heptameron. During their reigns, both siblings became important cultural patrons, and naturally, she left an important legacy to the world with her poetry. Her mother, who had an extremely acute sense for politics, knew that she had to prepare both of her children as best as she could, and for that reason, Marguerite had a privileged education equal to the one her brother received. She belonged to one of the most powerful families of the sixteenth century by being the daughter of Louise de Savoy (quite a she-wolf bearer of monarchs), and sister of King Francis I of France. Who was this outstanding lady we’re talking about? She was Marguerite of Angoulême, better known as Marguerite of Navarre, Queen consort of Navarre. Adding to this wonderful equation, she was a woman who liked to discuss subjects that were taboo at the time, and she chose a particularly male-dominated genre to change people’s perspectives on female sexuality and pleasure.
We’ve seen cases of ancient sex manuals that shed light on how sexuality was understood in the past, or even cases of more contemporary texts that go against mainstream views on sex and pleasure, but the one we’re going to discuss today is completely unique in its own way.įor starters, as you saw from the title, we’re talking about a royal, the ultimate representation of morality and virtue.
However, there have always been very, let’s say, innovative minds that go against the established norms and prove that we’re pleasure-driven beings that will always find a way to satisfy our desires and urges. In the past, religion played a huge role on everything from laws and art to normal aspects of everyday life. As a rule, when we look back at history, we usually see previous societies as much more conservative than ours.
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