In one of the finest new L'Heptaméron, a gentleman named Elisor promises to the queen to show him during a hunting party, the woman he loves in the secret of his heart. Dismounted, took off his coat and Elisor discovers a mirror attached to his belly where just to take the reflection of the queen. Mirrors of Eros. Giant mirror that prolific collection that reflected the most diverse loves the vilest to the most virtuous, the most filthy with more admirable, more comedy to the more tragic. Munificence of a work where éploient endless wanderings of Eros, "the little god who takes as much pleasure in tormenting the poor princes, and stronger than the weak and makes them blind until then d forget God and their conscience, and at the end their own lives. " Eros mobile, unstable, unpredictable, "because this glorious God takes into account the common things, and enjoys his majesty to make all miracles days as weaken the strong, strengthen the weak, give intelligence to the ignorant, oster meaning to the wisest, to promote passions destruire reason and brief amorous deity pleasure in such mutations. " The Heptaméron proliferates: seventy-two news to tell the most varied love, carnal lusts, criminal sleeping around, absolute loyalty gallant stories or variations on "perfect friendship" and platonic attachment. The whole society scrolls - king, queen, nobles, bourgeois, galley captain, merchants, apothecary, chambermaids, priests, Franciscan brothers ... - to identify, on all modes amorous universality. One of the most characteristic literary aesthetics of the Renaissance traits - the "varietas" - triumph here: a variety of styles and themes to say, in short, the aporias of the heart and flesh. The comic stories of inspiration close in their fables, embroider their fill on similar and repetitive canvas: this fool who thought will in turn deceived and exposed, the image of the Cordeliers countless ourdissant worst stratagems to satisfy their carnal desires . Infinitely more subtle, the gallant new revolve on themes always likely to attract the interest of a contemporary reader. Certainly The Heptaméron possesses the finesse of the Grand Siècle texts; Yet long before La Princesse de Cleves, Marguerite of Navarre with spirit meditates on the necessary concealment hearts in an aristocratic society. Lovers codes are binding. In public, the amorous wounds must remain secret: as a gentihomme he waits patiently fade the marks of bites inflicted by the beloved "if he did not return to the point that it runs well cured of all fust his wounds, setting out one's love and the spite had done him in the Heart "; and another does sail under the tears of mourning that the indifferent, the loss of his mistress. Art of concealing that not mastered yet, due to excessive passion, the young Amadour "the hidden fire in her heart the brusloit so strong that he could not empescher that color in the demeurast face, and that in estincelles not protrude through the eyes. " The body betrays the most secret folds of the soul. In contrast, as in The Princess of Cleves, one falls sick or is already dying in the Renaissance under the weight of secrecy and silence too well guarded: "parfaicte love leads people death too Estre mescogneüe or concealed. " The Heptaméron pose, as a corollary to this theme, an agonizing question hotly debated in the 1540s following the famous "Quarrel of Friends": how far the body can they coerce in abstinence? Is chastity a great love accessible? The most beautiful stories reveal the horrors of dissatisfaction of the senses: the virtuous Amadour, unable to love more than a purely spiritualized, twice tried to rape her friend; in a lighter tale, a lover succeeds chastity tests imposed on him sleeping with his lady, then with a servant, without touching them. Further, subject to waiting too long, break with "parfaicte friendship" to devote himself to God's love. The debate is unquenchable ... Hircan who commented with sarcasm lovers fates of all these "Platonizing" Hircan already so quick to flush out the vice in the apparent virtue of women and defend the pleasure of the flesh deal with religious discourse, delivered sentences that could nourish the thought of a La Rochefoucauld would surprise and not on the lips of a libertine and cynical lord of the eighteenth century. Between comic verve of medieval tales and analytical virtuosity of classical moralists, Marguerite of Navarre holds a unique place in French literature. Better still, it anticipates by its profundity, speculative lines on the body and the heart, which still innervate novelistic production. At each discover and learn to follow them.
