Marguerite de Navarre’s Heptaméron is seductive: her insistence on the truth of her
tales, which she asserts in the collection’s preface, capitalizes on readers’ desires
for courtly fiction. Since she was well connected politically and socially1-both
queen over the kingdom of Navarre in what is now the south of France, as well
as sister to François I, one of the first monarchs to centralize power and rule most
of the Hexagon-Marguerite likely understood that her readers encountered
her stories hopeful to discover disguised portraits and private details about her
friends, allies, and acquaintances-real, extratextual, historical people, powerful
and famous. This mode of reading has continued over time, as scholarly attention
has been devoted to unlocking the historical mysteries behind the tales, to locating
real people and events within the fictional narrative’s characters and plots.2 Such
interpretations have generic implications: readers past and present attempt to read
the text as a roman à clef, to view the text as offering commentary on real people
and true experiences.3
