Gender Flexibility and Androgyny in Marguerite de Navarre’s Chansons spirituelles

This article examines connections between Marguerite de Navarre’s mystic spiritualism and the androgyne myth. First, it describes how the queen’s devotional poetry and chansons spirituelles often give voice and authority to female speakers by their reworking of literary convention to reverse inherent gender relationships and ecclesiastical hierarchy and promulgate a feminized spirituality. Building on this gender-based inquiry, this contribution proposes that the androgyne myth can be a powerful interpretive tool for studying gender shifts and slips present in these texts, allowing readers to imagine a space where the best way to approach God is both masculine and feminine.