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Magdalen's Skull: Allegory and Iconography in Heptameron 32

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 November 2018

François Rigolot
François Rigolot*
Affiliation:
Princeton University
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Extract

Skulls. Finalities. They emerge towards new beginnings.

Charles Tomlinson

Few readers of Marguerite de Navarre's Heptameron will easily forget the sinister scene in novella 32, where a young, beautiful but unfaithful woman is forced by her vengeful husband to drink out of her dead lover's skull. Although equally cruel analogues could be found in Boccaccio's Decameron, Marguerite's strikingly macabre scene seems to be unique in Renaissance literature. Representations of human skeletons are, of course, plentiful in fifteenth- and sixteenth-century iconography, a period often characterized by its obsession with death. Certainly Marguerite may have been influenced by the pervading vanitas and memento morimotifs. At the same time, the whole scene could be viewed as a staged perversion of relic worship, a practice much frowned upon in evangelical circles favored by Marguerite.

Type
Studies
Information
Renaissance Quarterly , Volume 47 , Issue 1 , Spring 1994 , pp. 57 - 73
Copyright
Copyright © Renaissance Society of America 1994

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