Approaches to Teaching Marguerite de Navarre’s Heptameron
- Editor: Colette H. Winn
- Pages: xvi & 247 pp.
- Published: 2007
- ISBN: 9780873525923 (Paperback)
- ISBN: 9780873525916 (Hardcover)
“It will greatly benefit those who face the challenging pedagogical endeavor of making the study of the Heptameron accessible and rewarding.”
—Sixteenth Century Journal
“This text is a superb contribution to the series and will successfully assist teachers in their efforts to make Marguerite de Navarre’s collection of stories not only more accessible, but also more vivid and relevant for new generations of students.”
—French Review
Marguerite de Navarre—writer, reformer, patron—was a key figure of the French Renaissance. Her works, however, were critically reassessed by scholars only in the twentieth century. Today her Heptameron is widely anthologized and frequently taught in undergraduate and graduate classrooms. But teaching this collection of novellas presents challenges: the work is in Middle French, complex in its construction, and far-reaching in its use of historical context. This ninety-fifth volume in the Approaches to Teaching World Literature series aims to show teachers how to unravel the intricacies of the Heptameron for students. The first part, “Materials,” reviews editions and translations, surveys sources that are useful in the classroom, and considers audiovisual and technological resources available to instructors. The second part, “Approaches,” features twenty-seven essays that explore the Heptameron and its cultural and historical contexts; the religious and political ideas and the literary genres that influenced it; its publishing history; and its relation to other works by Marguerite. Experienced instructors share insights about how to teach this work in foreign language and survey courses; how to incorporate film and visual art in the classroom; and how to approach the subject of gender in discussing Marguerite’s writing.
Pascale Barthe
Susan Broomhall
Hervé Thomas Campangne
Tom Conley
Jane Couchman
Olga Anna Duhl
Gary Ferguson
Philip Ford
Nancy M. Frelick
Hope Glidden
Patricia Gravatt
George Hoffmann
Geoffrey R. Hope
E. Joe Johnson
Virginia Krause
Kathleen M. Llewellyn
Kathleen Long
Deborah N. Losse
Mary B. McKinley
Jan Miernowski
Charles G. Nauert
Dora E. Polachek
Catharine Randall
Michael Randall
Sylvie L. F. Richards
François Rigolot
Michael Sherberg
Corinne F. Wilson
Cathy Yandell
