Marguerite de Navarre’s Heptameron is the most important French prose narrative of the Renaissance. Written in the tradition of Boccaccio’s Decameron, it frames seventy-two tales of love, passion, and betrayal within a group of noble travelers stranded by floods in the Pyrenees, each of whom tells stories and debates their moral implications with intelligence and wit.
This first volume introduces the frame and opens the tales. Marguerite’s sympathy for women’s experience and her humanist learning give the stories unusual depth. Download this public-domain English translation as a free EPUB.