ABSTRACT
Despite the considerable amount of erudition expended on the Heptaméron in the past eighty years, Félix Frank’s edition of 1879, in three volumes, has remained not only the starting-point for most serious research, but in many ways the finishing-post as well. Thanks to M. François 1 we now have an edition soundly based on MSS., which includes the main variants and alternative stories; thanks to P. Jourda 2 a good deal of Marguerite’s biography is now much clearer; thanks to E. V. Telle 3 and L. Febvre 4 we can see Marguerite’s religious and psychological ideas in something like the proper perspective. The work of all these, and other scholars, deserves acknowledgement, but it is no exaggeration to say that some of the basic problems of the work have yet to be solved. R. Ritter 5 is almost the only recent critic to have queried some of the facts so long accepted on trust by others, but even he has not gone far enough. The series of interlocking problems involved is perhaps insoluble in the same way as those affecting any other unfinished work, but there are some questions which should have been asked long ago and some answers which should never have been given.
