Appeals for pity in the Heptameron

Renascence, Spring 2001 by Baker, Mary J

MARGUEITE de Navarre's Heptameron, a major Renaissance collection of stories, is both derivative and distinctive. This unfinished book (it contains seventy-two stories rather than the projected one hundred), was published posthumously (1559), and was undoubtedly inspired in part by Boccaccio's Decameron (1353). Marguerite's work distances itself from the Italian model in a number of ways, however. For instance, the ten storytellers (devisants) are divided equally between men and women (as compared to seven women and three men in the Decameron), an arrangement that suggests parity between the sexes. Additionally, the catalyst for the storytelling is a flood rather than the Plague. The flood, which causes those taking a cure at Cauterets in the Pyrenees to flee, evokes the biblical flood (reference is made to Noah), and establishes a Christian framework for the stories. The future devisants, all endangered by the rising waters, face various hazards (including encounters with bears and bandits) as they escape. They ultimately meet up with each other in a monastery, where they are described as "miraculeusement assemble [miraculously brought together]". Their gratitude to God is so great that the night does not seem long enough for praising God for his grace (6).

The Heptameron does have, however, an obvious secular dimension. Mixed in with pious narratives are stories in a lighter, occasionally bawdy vein, a few of which are analogous to tales in the more consistently racy fifteenth-century story collection, the anonymous Cent nouvelles nouvelles (c. 1462). Furthermore, discussions following the Heptameron stories sometimes address practical or worldly questions, such as why, if a love was virtuous, it had to be kept secret (tale 70); or they expose interpersonal conflicts among the devisants. The Christian foundation in the Heptameron is nevertheless firm. It manifests itself not only in Biblical allusions and in the expression of gratitude to God, or in direct quotations from the Bible, but also in ways that are not always explicit. A case in point is the treatment of appeals for pity. In this context we find a critique of rhetorical manipulation that includes within its scope a confirmation of Christian values. Marguerite is an instructive contrast to Michel de Montaigne in this regard, who looks at appeals for pity through a secular lens. This present study shows that treatment of appeals for pity can be a significant marker of adhesion to or dissociation from certain Christian principles, and that these kinds of appeals can give us an important angle from which to examine religious attitudes in Renaissance France.

Near the end of the "Prologue" to the Heptameron, Parlamente, a leader among the devisants, reminds her companions that when monseigneur le Daulphin originally proposed the story-telling project that she is now endorsing, he sought to exclude as narrators those "qui avoient estudie et estoient gens de lettres [who had studied and who were men of letters]" (9). He did not want to involve "art" in the project, fearing that "la beaulte de la rethoricque feit tort en quelque partye a la verite de :l'histoire [rhetorical ornament might compromise in some way the truth of the story]" (9). Parlamente's remarks constitute a caveat to the devisants about the dangers of the artifice of rhetoric. This stance is consistent with the effort on the part of Renaissance storytellers to counter the indictment of fiction as lie.1

The "Prologue" does not furnish the only example in the Heptameron of a critique of rhetorical manipulation. Marguerite de Navarre's suspicion of rhetoric is pervasive in this work.2 One significant area of rhetorical abuse occurs in the context of appeals for pity,3 which are compelling instances of rhetorical "art" designed to manipulate the behavior of others! These self-interested, often hypocritical appeals prove largely to be disingenous and/or misleading, and at worst, deliberately deceitful. Their presence in the Heptameron calls attention to the importance of certain Christian virtues, and indicates that criticism of rhetoric in this work covers more than simply suspicion of "art" in the telling of stories.

Three kinds of appeal were recognized in classical rhetoric-pathos (an appeal to emotion), ethos (an appeal to character), and logos (an appeal to reason).5 An example of an appeal to character in the Heptameron would be a reference to a devisant as a person of bon sens [good sense]. An appeal to pity falls under the rubric of pathos.6 A criticism of rhetorical manipulation is apparent when an individual in the Heptameron makes an appeal for pity on his or her own behalf. Such an appeal is commonly devalorized. An appeal to reason is not denigrated, however, but can be ambiguous if hypocrisy or deceit is also implicated.

The Heptameron features both characters who feel pity for the suffering or misfortune of others, and those who attempt to have others pity them. In the first instance, the feeling of pity for others, a sentiment with Christian overtones, is generally validated, even if the pity is conferred on an unworthy object. Here pity is synonymous with compassion, and there is no evidence of rhetorical manipulation. The virtue of those characters who try to get others to pity them is doubtful, however. In these cases, a link to compassion is more tenuous, and the presence of rhetorical manipulation is more palpable.