Artikel
Problems of Power in Marguerite de Navarre's Heptaméron : ruse, mortification, and the everyday
Verfasst von:
Kenny, Neil
info
in:
Oxford:
2011
,
251 - 261 S.
Weitere Informationen
| Einrichtung: | Ariadne | Wien |
|---|---|
| Verfasst von: | Kenny, Neil info |
| In: | |
| Jahr: | 2011 |
| Sprache: | Englisch |
| Beschreibung: | |
| Marguerite de Navarre was a leading figure in networks of political power. But what picture of power emerges from her celebrated collection of novellas, L'Heptaméron, composed between about 1542 and 1549? The question is investigated through attention to the rich semantic field of puissance, force, auctorité, contraincte, obedience. This sixteenth-century discourse is here compared, and in some respects contrasted, with those of two of the most influential recent thinkers about power, Foucault and Certeau. Although L'Heptaméron partly promotes a particular version (both feudal and monarchical) of the juridical view of power, representing some people as ‘having’ power, the text also undermines that ‘having’ by making it temporary and temporal, showing how it is disrupted by sexual desire and ruse. This picture of power is further complicated by the uncertain moral status of ruse and trickery, a consequence of the unclear moral status of the social and institutional designs that are resisted by ruse and pursued by those with most jurisdiction and influence. The problem is that God, the only being in whom power does reside permanently, lies beyond human reach. Mortification is a way of trying to extend that reach and so experience the truth about power's supra-human Otherness, by renouncing human powers as illusory. But mortification also proves controversial. Marguerite de Navarre uses the resources of fiction not to convey a theory of power but to represent power as a problem, one for which protagonists seek differing solutions – some more authoritative than others, but none definitive. | |
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