The Heptameron
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This site offers a beautifully illustrated edition of the The Heptameron by Marguerite de Navarre. The drawings on this website are from an edition of the Heptameron published in 1894 for THE SOCIETY OF ENGLISH BIBLIOPHILISTS. Risque books such as the Heptameron were considered too naughty to be sold in book stores at the time, so they were usually circulated by subscription between private collectors.
The Heptameron is a collection of 72 short stories written in French by Marguerite de Navarre (1492 - 1549), the queen consort of King Henry II of Navarre. She was a patron of humanists and reformers, an author, and an outstanding figure of the French Renaissance.
Her most famous literary work is the Heptameron. The Heptameron is modeled after the Decameron by the Italian author Boccaccio. Like the Decameron, the Heptameron, used the device of a group of people cut off from the rest of the world, who resolve to tell each other stories in order to pass the time. In the Decameron, the storytellers are in voluntary seclusion at a country estate in hopes of avoiding the Black Death which was then raging through Europe.
The Heptameron was written by Queen Navarre as a personal amusement and for many years it existed only in handwritten form. The first printed edition was published in 1558 in Paris, but it was a poor edition, with many printing errors and it contained only 67 of the stories.
 In the Heptameron, the narrators are trapped at a mountain resort after spring floods wash away the roads. They tell each other stories while they wait for the road to reopen. The stories are often bawdy in nature and deal with themes of infidelity, deceit, lust and greed. The stories are often morally ambiguous and the heroes and heroines of the stories are often morally reprehensible. The choice of stories also sheds light on the character and personality of the narrators, who often reveal things about themselves and their past, by the stories they tell and their reactions to the tales.
Like the Decameron, the Heptameron was meant to comprise 100 stories told over 10 days. Unfortunately Marguerite died before she could complete the eighth day of the stories. Only 72 stories were completed at the time of her death and the work was unnamed by her.
Later translators of her works named the collection The Heptameron in homage to the Decameron. The name of the Decameron is a compound of the Greek words for "ten" and "days". By analogy, the Marguerite's work was given the title of Heptameron, a compound of the Greek words for "seven" and "day", in reference to the fact that most of the stories take place during the first seven day period.
Many of the stories from the Heptameron deal with universal themes of love, lust, and infidelity.
This site presents the stories and illustrations from the Heptameron.
Note: In googling my site using the term heptameron, I found that there are a number of sites out there that use the term heptameron to refer to certain magical and occult rites. This site has nothing to do with that kind of occult magical nonsense. In fact I suspect that Marguerite de Navarre, a devout Catholic, would be turning in her grave if she knew that the title of her book, heptameron, were being used for such things.
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