Podcasts: Dr. Kathleen Bradley
"Marguerite the Queen of Navarre: The Right to Write: l'Heptaméron" - February 26, 2008

Outline of Podcast

• Listen to the entire podcast (01:28:37 MP3)


• Listen to the welcome and introduction (00:06:32 MP3)
• Listen to Dr. Bradley’s lecture (00:20:46 MP3)
• Listen to the questions and answers (00:19:49 MP3)

Additional Notes

1. Welcome and Introduction
• Associate librarian, Verónica Reyes, welcomes and introduces Dr. Classen who gives an overview/closing for this lecture series and an announcement about next year’s Series. Verónica Reyes continues the introduction with background information on Dr. Bradley.
2. Dr. Bradley’s lecture
• Dr. Bradley begins with a biography of Marguerite. 1492-1549. Her brother Francois, became King of France, Marguerite married Henry, King of Navarre. She gave birth to two children, a daughter and a son who died at age 5 months. L’ Heptaméron” was modeled after Giovanni Boccaccio’s "Decameron". It contains seventy-two stories, "ten stories for seven days plus two stories on the eighth day." In Boccaccio’s version, the storytellers, three men and three women come together to flee the plague in Florence. Marguerite’s work has five men and five women as the storytellers who come together to escape a torrential rainfall. Dr. Bradley describes the storytellers’ personalities and the subjects of the stories they tell. For Example Oiselle, the eldest, represents a spiritual mother, her stories have moral values, and center on rape murder, betrayal, infidelity, and dishonesty. Dr. Bradley closes by discussing the eighth novella in the work, positing that it represents Marguerite’s wit, humor, and her distaste for society’s double standards. The story centers on infidelity and a double deception.
3. Questions and Answers
• Discussions revolve around the text popularity (in the past and present) the influence of Marguerite lineage on her writing, and other women writers.