ABSTRACT
This chapter considers how Queen Marguerite of Navarre employed innovative rhetorical and pictorial strategies in luxury manuscripts as a means of approaching Francis I through his consort. Marguerite's presentation copy for the duchess likely closely resembled the Oxford and Chantilly copies, and it may even be one of the extant manuscripts that the duchess then presented in turn as a gift to her kin. In the illuminated manuscript versions of La Coche, the figure of the peasant further evokes the complex culture of social rank and exchange in which it was created. The tight weave of words and images evident in the manuscript copies of La Coche that Marguerite commissioned enabled her to shape a reading of the poem that focused on her relationships to designated recipients: Francis I, the Duchess of Etampes, and their retinues.
