PIERRE BOAISTUAU - eTheses Repository - University of Birmingham

penalisation of Boaistuau, but this affair cost him his position as secretary to François
de Clèves, Duke of Nevers, and earned him an obvious embarrassment amongst his
contemporaries, and a reproach from later scholars. 411 However, it did not put a halt to
his writing career, since he published two very successful works shortly afterwards,
the Histoires tragiques (1559) and Histoires prodigieuses (1560). Although research
has tended to focus on various aspects of Heptameron, it has overlooked Boaistuau’s
version. 412 Its examination in this section will shed fresh light on the editing practices,
add to the study of the French nouvelle, and prove how humanist values were
embedded into Boaistuau’s narrative.
Histoires des amans fortunez was a collection of short stories following a style similar
to One Thousand and One Nights and Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales. The stories were
narrated by a group of French nobles (five women and five men: Oisille, Hircan,
Parlamente, Longarine, Dogoucin, Saffredant, Nomerfide, Ennarsuitte, Guebron and
Simontault) who had visited the Cauterets baths at the Pyrenees but were hampered
by floods on their way back to France. 413 They found refuge at the abbey of St. Savin,
where they decided to stay for a few days, and began to narrate stories ‘pour passer le
temps le plus ioyeusement’. Compared to the definitive version of Heptameron which
411
See for instance Courbet, E., ‘Jeanne d’Albret et l’Heptaméron’, where Boaistuau was presented as
a opportunist.
412
Historiography on Heptameron is vast. For a first insight see Cazauran, N., L’Heptameron de
Marguerite de Navarre (Paris, 1976), Mathieu-Castellani, G., La conversation conteuse: les nouvelles
de Marguerite de Navarre (Paris, 1992), and Lyons, J. D., McKinley, M. B. (eds), Critical Tales: New
Studies of the Heptameron and Early Modern Culture (Philadelphia, 1993). Some of the critical
editions include De Navarre, M. (ed. S. de Reyff), L’Heptaméron (Paris, 1982); De Navarre, M. (ed. R.
Salminen), Heptaméron (Geneva, 1999); De Navarre, M. (ed. N. Cazauran), L'Heptaméron (Paris,
2000). However, the only recent article on Boaistuau’s version is Stone, D., ‘Observations on the text
of the Histoires des amans fortunez’, Renaissance Quarterly, vol. 33, no. 2 (1980), pp. 201-213.
413
Although Marguerite used fake names for her story-tellers, they can be identified with noblemen
and noblewomen from her entourage who probably contributed to the compilation of the work. In fact,
Parlamente has been identified with the Queen of Navarre herself. For more see Davis, B. J., The
Storytellers in Marguerite de Navarre's Heptaméron (Lexington, 1978).
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