Savoir -rire a la Francaise: Female use of humor and witticisms in Marguerite de Navarre's 'l'Heptameron'

This dissertation studies the representation of female humor and witticisms in Marguerite de Navarre's l'Heptameron and explores the ways in which it reflects both ancient and renaissance understandings of humor. Chapter One examines the ways in which l'Heptameron enters into dialogue with Aristotle's, Cicero's, and Quintilian's conceptions of humor and with the renaissance theories of laughter that appropriate and reinterpret these classical conceptions, namely Giovanni Pontano's, Baldassare Castiglione's, and Laurent Joubert's. Chapter Two more closely examines widely accepted renaissance attitudes about female speech and use of humor and examines the ideals and prescriptions governing them, especially as presented in domestic treatises, literary dialogues, conduct books, and essays and treatises on female education. This chapter considers how Marguerite's text enters into dialogue with these pervasive ideas, and how it alternately acknowledges certain concerns while reinterpreting and challenging others. Chapters Three and Four examine literary portrayals of female humor in texts written by Marguerite's predecessors and by her contemporaries. Chapter Three considers Italian Renaissance novella and facetiae collections that were popular during Marguerite's day, considering the French Renaissance translations and compilations of these texts, and comparing the way in which the Italian collections and their French Renaissance appropriations portray female humor to the way l'Heptameron portrays female humor. Chapter Four studies collections from the French Renaissance novella tradition and considers how Marguerite's portrayal of female humor compares to that of the seminal French novella collection Cent nouvelles nouvelles and to works by some of her sixteenth century French contemporaries. Because of its nuanced understanding of ancient and renaissance conceptions of humor, and because of the ways it subtly acknowledges some renaissance humanists' negative attitudes about female speech and use of humor, l'Heptameron does indeed reflect many conventional attitudes of its time. But at the same time, it reinterprets other renaissance attitudes about women's use of speech and humor, thereby combating deep cultural prejudices.