Marguerite de Valois (Biographies Historiques) (French Edition)
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The Valois understood their exercise of power within a Neo-Platonic framework in which politics was an imitation of cosmic harmony. To rule was at once a public relations exercise and a dream, one which the events from the s until the end of the century proved to be cruelly ill-founded. The reality of human action was grounded in pragmatic approach that derived, at best, from Aristotle and, at worst, from Machiavelli himself, or even from a French reception of Machiavelli that had twisted his thought into a polemical weapon for use against Catherine and her children.
In the Memoirs , Marguerite offers the self-portrait of someone shaped by experience and by a learning process that led her to uncouple appearances from reality. In the process, she paradoxically discovered within herself the dualities that writing allowed her to express. They interrogate the correspondence between being and appearance and question the unity of being over time. The Neo-Platonic notion of representation, according to which a beautiful appearance corresponds to an unchanging nature, does not convey the truth of being.
The Memoirs paint a portrait of their author engaged in a kind of apprenticeship, which allows her little by little to recognise the prudence of the political players around her, but which also permits her to partially adopt this virtue, if not politically, at least insofar as it enriches into her literary style. The claim to truth, which governs the book, conflicts with the complex relationship between interiority and exteriority.
The Memoirs are not content to record facts and observable data; they map out the internal space in which decisions are made and feelings are born, and they seek in various ways to describe the relationship between these two spheres. This experience is fundamental to the pragmatics of politics, but it is also more universal, and in this sense shapes identity.
Furthermore, Protestantism questioned the link between religion and forms of observance. Beginning with the depiction of childhood, each section deals with one or another aspect of this question. The next episode p. The episode that follows p. On the other hand, it has a very definite historical significance The description concludes with her recalling a storm that put an end to the party. Marguerite depicts it in this way: It thus reaffirms the power of the celebration organized by the Valois, all the while underlining the vanity involved.
According to historians, the range of details recalled by Marguerite reflects her understanding of the political stakes involved in these spectacles The subtle opposition between nature and Fortune links this episode to those that precede it, as well as to the incipit. The text thus takes its place as part of a narrative in which each section involves the problem of representation. In three movements, Marguerite shows the prudence displayed by Catherine and Henri in their use of words, the feelings of each member of the family and the instrumental function that the family as a whole is forced to fulfill.
Marguerite plays on the different registers of representation in order to show how these registers dictate behavior and how she herself learns little by little to recognise them and no longer simply to endure their effects. The series of episodes leading up to the wedding and the Saint Bartholomew massacre heighten these effects. She follows in the footsteps of Commynes, who drew pragmatic and moral lessons from his observation of history.
The interpretative model she proposes is similar to certain modern analyses of the French court as a sphere of representation and of the political use of representation as an instrument of domination, notably those of Norbert Elias 27 and Louis Marin Each episode turns the court into a sphere of display where the great and the good are no longer divine incarnations referred to by the rhetorical device of antonomasia and featured in court parties 31 , but rather actors in a tragi-comedy. Torn between two models of masculinity as a young child, she was rejected by her brother who considered her at best a reflection of his own worth and an instrument to be used.
Another striking example of this phenomenon lies in the account of the embassy of the king of Portugal: It makes manifest a repressed subjectivity, far removed from the facade constructed for the purposes of court life.
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The Queen of Navarre could then speak and assume the choice of this marriage that had been imposed upon her. The framing of the narrative and the arrangement of its motifs offer an anthropological and political perspective that shows how difficult it is for the individuals to construct themselves in a world where taking on an identity amounts to disappearing.
Over the course of these episodes, the Memoirs tell of a growing gap between inward being and the world and the emergence of a subjectivity suspicious of appearances.
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Reading allows us to discover the Good and to recognise God within ourselves. Marguerite explains of how her captivity in the Louvre converted her to reading, which permitted her to detach herself from a universe of deception in order to learn about the world in books and to recognise the innermost self, the home of knowledge and devotion.
One episode in particular seems to represent this phenomenon through another mise en abyme. Marguerite depicts herself with Catherine, who is questioning her about the escape of her brother: She experiences the powers of language and its capacity to shape the individual in her relationship to others. Here, Marguerite underscores the disjunction between appearances and inner feelings: This dialectical relationship is illustrated in the depiction of a surprising character: And, turning to me so that she could not hear him, he said: The cynical philosopher is a model of philosophical and linguistic irony, of the way literature as a mode of thinking and verbal expression shapes the individual.
Marguerite thus uses the resources of writing in order to create a flexible space in which the individual avoids being constrained, puts her subjectivity to use and shapes her authorial identity. She is also covered with blood when she roams the streets following the massacre, and when she treats the wounded La Mole. As before, she is unapproachable, self-contained, and in total control. True love dissolves into self-love.
In fact, this liberated woman ends up being an ancient familiar female stereotype, a new pseudo-feminist version of the old female vampire. Her love is deadly, her gaze hypnotic, her sexual prowess obscene. Like numerous Twentieth century Hollywood female vampires, Margot is a human animal and a social degenerate, a masculinized woman, motivated by blood-lust and hatred of men cf. Claire Duchen, Joan W. Scott, and Mona Ozouf have analysed the paradoxical tension within French femin- ism between equality and difference.
Rousseau to the present, which emphasizes the idea that solidarity and friendship are based on the mutual attraction of funda- mental differences. The idea of equality, as it has been articulated in the Dec- larations of the Rights of Man, has created a universal individual and has refused to address difference or to recognize different rights Duchen ; Scott Complete equality between the sexes has been construed in France as the denial of femininity and the masculanization of women. Others, among them Simone de Beauvoir after , supported a universalis- tic approach.
But for both trends within French feminism, femaleness, and especially femininity, remained a quintessential attribute of women in general and of French women in particular. She expresses herself through the pursuit of femininity and coquetry. Her femininity and sexuality become the only essence of her existence, and leave her, once again, exposed to male fantasies and anxieties.
All are written from a feminist perspective, and all three authors dis- mantle different elements of the legends that have surrounded the queen, and try to separate the plausible from the implausible. All three also ask whether Marguerite was a feminist, and what does feminism mean in this context. She is not an active par- ticipant in historical events but their victim.
Marguerite admired, envied, and feared her mother Catherine de Medici, and tried to imitate her. She refused the second-class status of royal women, and from her mother learned the importance of having a female entourage of loyal supporters.
History as Voyeurism: from Marguerite De Valois to La Reine Margot | Moshe Sluhovsky - www.farmersmarketmusic.com
Garrisson recounts that when Marguerite failed to produce an heir, Catherine did not hesitate to press Henry to divorce her daughter, and she offered to marry him to one of her granddaughters instead. Rumours circulated in Paris that Catherine was even willing to murder Marguerite to achieve her goal 36, —3, —6.
(Ed) (Histoire) (French Edition) [De Valois M., Marguerite de Valois] on de l'ouvrage: Marguerite de Valois (reine de France; ) -- Biographies. Date de l'édition originale: Sujet de l'ouvrage: Marguerite de Valois (reine de France; ) -- Biographies Le présent ouvrage s'inscrit dans une.
Garrisson tries but fails to desexualize the queen. Repeatedly she found herself involved in sexual scandals, political intrigues, and even an open revolt against both her brother and husband.
Négociations de mariage
She herself caused her family to distrust her and her husband to reject her 82, , , Her politics followed her whims and passions , Lacking common sense, she allowed rage, despair, vengeance, arrogance and hatred to direct her , , , , The historian portrays here yet another familiar stereotype: Boucher, in fact, blames Marguerite for the ruined reputation of the Valois dynasty , and believes that her virtues as an author and a patron of the arts cannot compensate for the damage she did — Whether Mar- guerite is a helpless hysteric, for Garrisson, or an impulsive hysteric, for Boucher, both associate sexual freedom in a woman with hysteria, thus repeating a familiar Nineteenth Century notion.
By so doing, they, too, assign the queen to the mythical role of melodramatic heroine. Marguerite was not a Catholic saint, and Viennot is careful not to portray her as such. She did conduct extra marital affairs, but these were serious emotional affairs, and were tolerated — on account of both his indifference and his political calculations — by her husband. Viennot also exposes the implausibility of many sexual affairs, preg- nancies, assassinations, and other deeds for which the queen has become known 65—6, 85, —4, This author realizes that every new biography of the last Valois is also a history of the dis- courses about her — of the mixture of knowledge and pseudo-knowledge; of erudition and popular opinion; of literature, history, and rumours; of how myths are being born Historians and biographers have created and recreated the last Valois as a vamp, a whore, or a cocquette, as a hysterical woman, controlled by her passions and sexual and familial frustrations.
It has been my argument that biographers and historians, just like novelists and cinematographers, employ a repetitive vocabulary of female representations: Starting in , the story was adapted to the stage numerous times, and was shown in Paris as a melodrama, a vaudeville, a burlesque, a comedy, and a serious drama. References Arnaldi, Ivan Margot e il suo Doppio: Storia di una Regina di Francia, Rome: Instituto della Enciclopedia Italiana. University of Chicago Press. Brooks, Peter The Melodramatic Imagination: History as Voyeurism Bunson, Matthew Vampire: Baguenault de Puchesse, Paris: Feminism, Semiotics, Cinema, Bloomington: Dijksra, Bram Idols of Perversity: Centre Matteo Bandello, pp.
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