What Women Know: The Power of Savoir in Marguerite de Navarre’s Heptaméron

The verbs savoir and connaître appear in central moments in the Heptaméron. Knowledge – as it appears in the frame narrative and in the novellas – can be a way for men and women to debate, among many other things, the relationship between the sexes. When women use this word, or when they demonstrate that they know something, it creates the space to participate – not always unambiguously – in otherwise male-dominated conversations. How Marguerite writes about the acquisition, possession, fragmentation or loss of knowledge underscores her interest in exploring the role of women in communities of knowledge.