Jessie Tu has just reviewed my new novel -- she says in part,
"Ryan’s style inspires the brilliant depth of character we want when reading historical fiction. Her characters feel real - alive and dynamic - flanked by Ryan’s translations of extracts from Marguerite’s writing. There’s a buoyancy of storytelling that makes The Queen’s Apprenticeship an extremely breezy read, despite the occasional uncomfortable scene."
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‘An enthralling novel of passion, literature and power, bringing to vivid life the story of Marguerite de Navarre – an ardent defender of the arts – and in doing so also giving voice to those who were often disregarded in the dramas of the time.’ Dominique Wilson, author of Orphan Rock and The Yellow Papers My new novel about Marguerite of Navarre is out at last!
Published by Transit Lounge (Australia); the ebook version is also available outside Australia. My next novel, The War Within Me, based on the life of Marguerite's daughter Jeanne d'Albret, will also be coming out with Transit Lounge. ANZ Litlovers has already given The Queen's Apprenticeship a write-up. Here is the publisher's blurb to give you a taste of what the book is like. It has a wholly fictional strand within the historically-based story... Two women from different worlds in Renaissance France cross paths in a way that changes both their lives. One is Marguerite de Navarre, a King’s sister. Powerful, privileged and widely admired, Marguerite must nonetheless marry where she is told to, regardless of her feelings, and – despite the thrilling new ideas of religious reform causing upheaval in France – must toe the line for the good of her brother’s kingdom. Ever a risk-taker, she does what she can to protect her reformist friends. But she has always loved to write, and when disaster strikes in her personal life, she picks up her pen – but some of what she writes will get her into trouble. The other is a cast out, itinerant child who longs to be a printer like her late father. Jehane goes dressed as a male by the name of Josse, at first for safety’s sake and then by choice, fending off the risks of being alone, unprotected and born female, poor but trying to live in freedom. Eventually Josse joins a group of printers and publishers in Paris. Despite her suspicion of men, she comes to idolise one among them. But can they be ‘true friends’, and can she share her whole self with him? Long before #MeToo, women were telling their ‘unspeakable’ stories, and these two, both rich and poor, are no exception. They come together in the most unexpected of ways. In The Queen’s Apprenticeship one of our very best writers brings to fully realised and magnificent life a world of drama and intrigue. If you have found this project of interest, you may like to follow my subsequent research and writing project for 2022, The War Within Me, a novel about Jeanne d'Albret, Marguerite of Navarre's daughter. The story continues here...
Rondeau of my lady the Duchess Marguerite
Picturing them pass by so piteously, My heart’s full of sadness, distressingly, To see them lead off one so greatly dear Beneath colours of glory and good cheer, Endangering a return in safety. I am amazed at how covetously Men are blind enough to render sickly Kingdom, children, sister and pained mother: Picturing them pass. Under the guise of wisdom, miserably, We have observed their lame mentality That cannot walk right, causing grief and fear To all the wise, mourning more than ever, Dreading too well the dubious journey, Picturing them pass. A couple more poems by Clément Marot, who belonged to Marguerite's household. (The rhyme patterns are only an approximation.) Clément Marot
I am loved by the loveliest I am loved by the loveliest Who could exist under heaven. Against any false, jealous one, Upon that beauty I insist. If Cupid, sweet, rebellious, Blindfold from his eyes had taken, Seeing her most gracious mien, He would, I trust, grow amorous. O Venus, immortal Goddess, You have made my heart blessed in Causing it to become smitten With a lady of the noblest. Of himself What I was, I am no longer, And cannot ever be again. My lovely spring and my summer Both out through the window have gone. Love, for me you have been master, Above all the Gods I’ve served you. Ah, if I were born twice over, How much better could I do so. Early in my research, I started reading various 16th-century European narratives, particularly first-person ones, to get a general feel for how some people wrote and saw life at that time. One such book was The Autobiography of Thomas Platter, a Swiss born 7 years after Marguerite, a poor man by origin but eventually a multilingual humanist scholar... Imagine my surprise when Marguerite came into his story... even if very indirectly! It's around the 1520s. Platter writes (trans. by Mrs Finn): 'The same year a Frenchman came from Basle, whom the Queen of Navarre had sent that he should learn Hebrew. He also came into the school; and when I went in with my poor clothes, I seated myself behind the stove, where I had a comfortable little seat, and allowed the students to sit at the table. The Frenchman now asked, "When does our Professor come?" Oporinus pointed to me. At this he looked at me, and without doubt felt surprise, because he thought such an one ought to be otherwise dressed, and not so badly. When the lesson was over, he took me by the hand, led me over the little bridge, and asked me how it happened that I was so badly clothed; and offered to write respecting me to the Queen, saying that she would make me a great man if I would only follow him. This person was expensively dressed, had a golden cap, and a servant who carried his hat and cloak after him. He also attended my lectures till he left the place; but I had no wish to follow him.' [highlights are mine! I like his modest simplicity...] Platter (b. 1499, d. 1582) outlived Marguerite by 33 years. He is not to be confused with his son, Thomas Platter the Younger, who also wrote about his experiences, among which were travel in England and seeing what may have been among the first performances of Shakespeare's Julius Caesar at The Globe. Given the connections with humanism and Greek studies, I shouldn't have been surprised to find Marguerite "popping up" in Platter's Autobiography; she was of course known all over the place. But not everybody would have turned down the offer to be made a "great man" by the Queen of Navarre! This poem written by Marot about Marguerite was not for a birthday (as far as I know), but I translate it here to mark her birthday today... (She was Duchess of Alençon by her first marriage.) On Madame the Duchess of Alençon by Clément Marot The value of my mistress is so high, Her body is straight, fine, modest and chaste; Her constant heart is never varied by Fortune, neither too glad nor too abased. With mind and wit angelic she is graced, The subtlest mind that ever reached the skies. O greatest marvel! You may see by this That, serf, I am by strangest monster led: Monster, I say, for truth to tell she has Feminine body, man’s heart, angel’s head. While researching birds in Renaissance France, I came across a book that was published the year after Marguerite died -- in 1550 -- and was actually dedicated to her daughter, Jeanne d'Albret. The book is by Guillaume Guéroult (1507-1569), and is called The Second Book of the Description of Animals, containing the Blazon of Birds. It is a kind of volucrary (like a bestiary, but dealing with birds), though as we'll see, it's more complicated than that! For each bird (including the mythical phoenix, which opens the collection!) there is a poem giving a description and a moral lesson drawn from it. Many of the birds still have the same or similar names in modern French (with perhaps different spelling). Their drawings are sometimes recognisable, other times baffling (a short-billed pelican?). One or two I could not figure out at all. Most strikingly, this "bird book" includes many creatures that also fly or are perceived as doing similar -- airborne creatures: grasshopper, butterfly, firefly/glow-worm, honeybees, and... bats! This is loosely what it says (bats' blood is healing????). I have not attempted to conform to metre or rhyme, but just to give the sense of the poem. From the Blason des oyseaux Within my narrative, I'm in 1530 or so, and my character is headed to Paris within the following year. Paris had plague from 1531 to 1533 -- I've been reading an account of some aspects of it in a book online at BNF Gallica -- the Ordonnances (decrees) "made & published to the sounding of a trumpet through the crossroads of this town of Paris to avoid the dangers of plague, 1531" (the book is a 19th-century artefact). Plagues were recurrent in France through the 16th century, and not just in Paris. The author quotes Ambroise Paré (1510-1590) (surgeon to French kings after François Ier; he later wrote a treatise on the plague, smallpox and measles) -- and contested the existence of unicorns! -- and I reproduce some of what is quoted from Paré on the Paris plague below, having broken it into paras that weren't there in the quote, for legibility's sake. "... Furthermore, the richest, even the magistrates and others, who have some authority in government of public affairs, are ordinarily among the first to absent themselves, and withdraw elsewhere, such that justice is no longer administered, there being no longer anyone present of whom it can be demanded; and then, everything runs into confusion, which is one of the greatest evils that could befall a republic when justice is lacking.
"And then the wicked bring upon us another plague, for they enter into houses and pillage as much as they can, stealing at their leisure with impunity, and most often cut the throats of the sick, even of the healthy, so as not to be recognised and accused afterwards... "In this town of Paris there were people who, with the aid of such masters, informed their enemy that he had caught the plague, when he had nothing at all wrong with him, and the day that he ought to speak for his suit, or undertake some act where his presence was required, had him abducted and carried off to the Hôtel-Dieu, by the force of these gentlemen, no matter the resistance he put up, because they were several against one, and if by some chance he implored help and mercy from people he saw, the thieves and murderers hindered him and shouted even louder than he did, so that he could not be heard; "... or else they gave it to be understood that illness had made him enraged and demoniacal, so that everyone around him fled, and during all this, they had the means of pushing him into the Hôtel-Dieu, getting him tied up and made to lie down among the plague-ridden. And some days afterwards, he died, as much from unhappiness as from infected air, his death having been sold and bought beforehand for goodly sums... "This illness makes a man so miserable that as soon as he is suspected of having it, his house (which was of the greatest security and liberty for him), serves him as a cruel prison, for he is locked up in there and may not come out; neither may anyone be admitted to help him. "If, in such time, one who is locked up and closed in this way should die, the others who are inside there must sometimes for a long time behold the horrible spectacle of bodies filled with vermin and decay, with a great stench of carrion, which reinforces the infection and poisonousness of the air, which can after the fact redouble the plague, and is often the cause of death for all those who are in the house. And if you withdraw to the fields, the same fear and horror are there... "All is shut up and closed in the towns, villages and hamlets, even the private homes are closed to their masters, such that often one is constrained to make some sort of makeshift home in the fields, well out of any conversation or acquaintance... "And what’s more, haven’t we seen in the said homes, father and mother being grievously ill, and unable to help their child, who have watched the child suffocate and [be] eat[en by] wasp-flies, and the mother trying to save it, getting up and falling dead between child and husband! "The more you are recognised by any vassals, or subjects, or servants you have, each of them turns their back on you, and nobody dares approach; even father abandons child, and child father; husband his wife, and wife her husband; brother his sister, and sister her brother; that is, those you think the most intimate and loyal friends at such times abandon you for the horror and danger of the sickness. "And if there is someone moved by Christian pity and charity, or by virtue of being related, who wants to step forth and help and visit a sick person, afterwards no relation or friend will come near them or frequent them in turn. "That it be so, we have seen, when you see only in the streets doctors, surgeons and barbers, chosen to bandage the sick, everyone runs after them throwing stones to kill them like mad dogs, saying they ought not to go out except by night, for fear of infecting the healthy." My novel-in-progress is currently in 1518, just after the birth of François Premier's first son, (he already had two daughters, but that counted little, except in terms of marital bargaining). This child was thus Marguerite's nephew & also her godson, as it happened. Clément Marot (ca. 1496-1544) figures in the story as an important poet and eventual member of Marguerite's household. His father had been a court poet before him, but Marot was the one whose fame would endure, as one of the great French Renaissance poets. Despite the wit, bawdiness and sometime seriousness of his remarkable oeuvre, it contains (of course) many "occasional" poems written for royal events, one of which I have roughly translated and share below, being written to mark the birth of the Dauphin. Marot also wrote a poem on the Dauphin's death only 18 years later. Such poets being dependent on kings and nobles for patronage, their work is of course often marred by flattery and disingenuousness, yet this poem seems to plead for peace and the protection of the small against the great. Nothing can capture the music and elaborate word-play of the original, but you can at least follow here the weirdly extended metaphor of the common riffing on "dolphin/Dauphin"... A good selection of translations of Marot (along with others by du Bellay and Ronsard) can be found in Norman Shapiro, Lyrics of the French Renaissance. I studied a number of poems by these men in school long ago in the 1970s — but certainly not the more scatological and risqué ones Shapiro includes in his translations. Clément Marot Upon the birth of my lord the Dauphin When Neptune, powerful God of the Sea, Every carrack and galley ceased to arm, French people loved him inevitably, And held his salty waves in great acclaim, Since he wished upon the low valleys calm And that the Sea of lofty Gaul be still, Calm as a fountain, and just as peaceful: And to relieve the sailors’ pained endurance, Set swimming in that water clear and whole, The fine Dauphin so much desired in France. Wood-nymphs, for his name’s sublimity, Went out upon the Sea for his esteem: And as one might expect it of the Sea, The falling waves gave no more froth or foam: For the great winds were sore of throat and dumb, And did not blow, unless their breath was gentle, So that the men on open seas might sail In no way fearful of the storm’s disturbance, Since they could foresee Peace made possible By the fine Dauphin so desired in France. Then were put down those Monsters of the Sea, And vanquished every fast declining storm, So ships from fear of sinking might be free, At last with sails at ease the tide they swam. The great fish leapt and cried aloud, and from The little most serene there came a call, One with the Siren, sweetly beautiful, Singing his noble birth with reverence, Wishing him welcome on the sovereign swell, The fine Dauphin so much desired in France. Envoy O sailor Prince fleeing deeds of evil, I beg of you to make sure that the Whale No longer causes the sardine nuisance, So in this worldly Sea is loved by all The fine Dauphin so much desired in France. |
Tracy RyanAuthor of ten books of poetry and six novels, I live and work in wheatbelt Western Australia. This blog charts my first venture into writing historical novels.
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