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Exemplarity And The Interpretive Frame In Marguerite De Navarre's Heptaméron, V. Stanley Benfell

Quidditas

Marguerite de Navarre's Heptaméron is one of the many works that have fallen prey to the contemporary fascination with indeterminacy and the poetics of failure. Increasingly, critics are writing of the "ambiguity" of the novella collection and the lack of narrative resolve that seems to characterize both the novellas and the discussions by the "devisants" that surround the novellas. My purpose in this essay is to contest this view. I intend to show that from a historical perspective, when the Heptaméron is seen in the light of the pervasive rhetorical concerns of late Renaissance writers, the prevailing critical view is …