Carlos Mata Indurain
Golden Age Research Group
When going through the literary history of Navarra, the first female name that we come across is that of Queen Doña Leodegundia, although she is not a writer, but the recipient of a work.
The Poem of Queen Leodegundia (Versi domna Leodegundia regina), written at the end of the 10th century and preserved in the miscellaneous Codex of Rhodes, is an epithalamic song (eighty-seven Latin verses distributed in tristics) composed for the wedding of this princess, daughter of Ordoño I of Asturias, with an infant or king from Navarre. Going a little further into the medieval centuries, we must refer to the phenomenon of minstrelsy.
Although the literary testimonies of this activity are rather scarce, it seems that it was quite widespread in Navarre, and also that it was not just a matter of men, since the existence of minstrelsies has been documented, such as a certain Graziosa, who recited at Court of Carlos III the Noble.
Beyond these minimal references to the Middle Ages, it will be in the Renaissance and Baroque (16th and 17th centuries) when we will find the first names of female writers in the Navarrese area.
They are narrations of quite casual themes and contents.
Margarita de Navarra: The first important figure is that of Margarita de Navarra (from Angoulême, from France, from Valois…), known as The pearl of the Valois. Madame Marguerite (Margot) of Angoulême, daughter of Charles of Angoulême and Louise of Savoy, older sister of King Francis I of France, was born in Angoulême in 1492.
A great reader, poetess and hunter, she married the Duke of Alençon at the age of seventeen for political reasons, and in her second marriage with Enrique de Albret, then claimant to the throne of Navarre. She manifested sympathies for Luther and Calvin and encouraged the Huguenot movement, although at the time of her death (occurring in Odes, Bigorre, 1549) she had reverted to the Catholic religion.
As a writer (and leaving aside other minor titles, some poems, etc.), she composed in French a collection of stories in the style of the Decameron of Boccaccio that is presented under the title of The Heptaméron (The Heptamerón).
In it Foreword We attend the meeting, in the baths of Cauterets, of three gentlemen, Hircan, Dagoucin and Saffredent, who together with other characters will thread the seventy-two stories of which the work consists (Heptameron It is divided into eight days, seven of which include ten stories and the eighth, only two; Apparently, the Queen of Navarra wanted to write a total of one hundred stories, distributed in ten days, but she could not complete her purpose).
They are narrations of rather casual themes and content, in which the lovemaking practices of the early Renaissance are described, without the author shying away from some lurid topics. All the stories are characterized by the vividness of the descriptions, the naturalness of the language and the psychological finesse in the portrayal of the characters, whether they are noblemen, peasants, bourgeois, clergymen or craftsmen.
Will continue..
2023-05-04 07:33:39
#Journal #Central #America
