scholarly journals What the Monk’s Habit Hides: Excavating the Silent Truths in Marguerite de Navarre’s Heptaméron 31

2015 ◽  
Vol 38 (2) ◽  
pp. 53-92
Author(s):  
Elizabeth Chesney Zegura
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Body Politic ◽  
Body Language ◽  
The Body ◽  
Marguerite De Navarre ◽  
Cautionary Tale ◽  
The Family ◽  
Two Kingdoms ◽  
I 31

In Heptaméron 31, Marguerite de Navarre portrays a lascivious “Cordelier” or Franciscan who takes over a matron’s household during her husband’s absence, kills her servants, and disguises the woman as a monk before abducting her. Despite its surface resemblance to Rutebeuf’s “Frère Denise,” which also unveils a Franciscan’s lechery, Marguerite’s narrative is not a simple anticlerical satire. Within it we find a critique of the over-trusting husband, metaphors of censorship, an inquest into the dialectics of silence and (in)sight, a foregrounding of the victims’ body language, and analogies between the body politic and the body of the family. With these tools Marguerite folds into her nouvelle an allegory of reading; a cautionary tale about the dangers of mistaking outward “works” for true godliness; and an histoire tragique with political overtones that figure a crisis of authority between Reform theology’s “two kingdoms,” or secular and sacred governance, in sixteenth-century France. Marguerite de Navarre, dans le conte 31 de L’Héptaméron, dépeint un « cordelier » (franciscain) luxurieux qui, en l’absence du mari, s’empare du foyer d’une dame, tue ses serviteurs, la déguise en moine et l’enlève. Malgré la ressemblance avec le «Frère Denise” de Rutebeuf, qui met aussi en scène un franciscain débauché, le récit de Marguerite n’est pas une simple satire anticléricale. On y trouve en effet d’autres éléments: une critique du mari trop confiant, des métaphores de la censure, une exploration de la dialectique entre silence d’une part et vue (et perspicacité) de l’autre, le spectacle du langage corporel des victimes, et des analogies entre les corps politique et le corps familial. Par ces moyens, Marguerite insère dans sa nouvelle une allégorie de la lecture, une mise en garde contre le danger de méprendre les « actes » visibles pour de l’authentique bonté et, enfin, une histoire tragique aux accents politiques où se donne à lire une crise de légitimité opposant les « deux royaumes » de la théologie de la Réforme dans la France du seizième siècle: le gouvernement d’ici-bas et le gouvernement sacré.

The Body Politic: Body, Language, and Power

1990 ◽  
Vol 52 (5) ◽  
pp. 570 ◽  
Author(s):  
Adalaide Morris ◽  
Page duBois ◽  
Rosalind Miles ◽  
Patricia Parker ◽  
Elaine Scarry
Keyword(s):  
Body Politic ◽  
Body Language ◽  
The Body ◽  
Language And Power

Marriage and Social Control

1914 ◽  
Vol 7 (3) ◽  
pp. 322-338
Author(s):  
Anna Garlin Spencer
Keyword(s):  
Formal Education ◽  
Body Politic ◽  
Social Institutions ◽  
The State ◽  
The Body ◽  
Freedom Of Association ◽  
Common Error ◽  
Democratic State ◽  
The Family ◽  
The Church

The Nineteenth Century was ushered in with trumpet-calls to self-assertion and social freedom. A vague but long-cherished hope of the elect of humanity that the masses, each and all, might yet become persons, crystallized during the eighteenth century into a popular assertion of “equality of rights” in the body politic as “the first of rights” and essential to the process of universal individuation. Thus was born the democratic State. The Church in Christian civilization had long before recognized the independent personality of all, even of slaves and of women, in its spiritual Magna Charta, which secured to every human being the right to own his own soul and laid upon each the burden of saving it. The Protestant Reformation added to this the duty of understanding “the plan of salvation,” and hence reinforced, and in many instances initiated, the demand of the State for an intelligent electorate. Thus Church and State worked together to call into being the free, tax-supported school, and to make compulsory some minimum of formal education. The democratic State and the democratic school have worked together to create slowly legalized freedom of association for manual laborers. Labor reform organizations, springing up at once as soon as legal restrictions upon such associations were removed, have initiated the collective struggle for common industrial betterment. Of the five basic institutions of society, therefore—the family, the Church, the State, the school, and the industrial order—four are already well on their way toward thorough-going democratization. It is necessary to remind ourselves of these familiar facts in order to escape the common error of treating some one institution of society as a detached social structure, the problems concerning which are to be solved independently of other human relationship. The first, the most vital, the most intimate, and the most universal of social institutions, that of marriage and the family, has longest resisted re-adjustment to the new ethics involved in the now accepted principle of equality of human rights.

Healing the Body Politic: French Royal Doctors, History, and the Birth of a Nation 1560-1634

2002 ◽  
Vol 55 (4) ◽  
pp. 1259-1286 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jacob Soll
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Political Science ◽  
Body Politic ◽  
The State ◽  
The Body ◽  
Political Modernity ◽  
New Vision

This article examines the role played by royal doctors in forming an empirical political science in France at the end of the sixteenth century. Bringing with them took from the Galenic tradition, doctors such as Rodolphe Le Maistre, Abraham-Nicolas de La Framboisière, and Jean Héroard doubled as political counselors. They not only looked for ways to heal the king's body, they also looked for ways to heal and regulate the body of the nation. Their new vision of the monarch as a practicing physician of the state is an essential yet unknown facet of the origins of political modernity.

Guarding the Daughter

2020 ◽  
pp. 87-108
Author(s):  
Ruth Streicher
Keyword(s):  
Romantic Relationships ◽  
Body Politic ◽  
The Body ◽  
Women's Groups ◽  
The South ◽  
Women’S Groups ◽  
The Family ◽  
Military Support ◽  
Imperial Family

This chapter traces constructions of gendered and sexualized difference in the Thai imperial formation by examining the more intimate matters of the conflict. These include discourses regarding rape and romantic relationships, the establishment of female paramilitary units to police Patani women, and military support for women's groups in the South. The focus of concern for the Thai military is not ultimately the daughter but the respectability of the family. The seduction of the daughter risks sullying the image of the imperial family and putting into question the father's masculine ability to protect; worse, the sexualized intrusion threatens the body politic because the undesired union might yield unwanted offspring. The “mission of 'guarding our daughter'” consequently aims at policing her sexuality in order to restore both the paternal authority of the Thai state over the southern provinces and the respectful order that regulates the rightful reproduction of the imperial formation.

scholarly journals Democracy and the Body Politic from Aristotle to Hobbes

2016 ◽  
Vol 46 (2) ◽  
pp. 167-196 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sophie Smith
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Body Politic ◽  
The Body ◽  
The Political ◽  
Conventional View ◽  
Political Theories ◽  
History Of

The conventional view of Hobbes’s commonwealth is that it was inspired by contemporary theories of tyranny. This article explores the idea that a paradigm for Hobbes’s state could in fact be found in early modern readings of Aristotle on democracy, as found in Book Three of the Politics. It argues that by the late sixteenth century, these meditations on the democratic body politic had developed claims about unity, mythology, and personation that would become central to Hobbes’s own theory of the commonwealth. Tracing the history of commentary on the relevant passages in Aristotle reveals new perspectives not only on the political theories of both Aristotle and Hobbes but also introduces modern readers to the richness of early modern commentaries on classical political texts. The article ends with some thoughts on why attention to traditions of commentary might be valuable for political theorists today.

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