An Ottoman “Fixer” in Marguerite de Navarre’s Heptaméron

Story 13 portrays the death of its French protagonist, a naval captain serving Marguerite’s brother, King Francis I. The captain dies in a battle against Ottoman forces near Beirut, but the narrator blames the captain’s second-in-command, a French naval officer. A character known only as the ‘Turk’ becomes the loyal companion who survives to tell the story to the French court. The Turk becomes a ‘fixer,’ a figure of mediation between cultures. Marguerite presents documented historical events, but the narrator portrays those events in ways that complicate a simple portrait of the Ottomans as enemies.