Storytelling in Sixteenth-Century France: Negotiating Shifting Forms [Paperback]

Storytelling in Sixteenth-Century Franceis an innovative, interdisciplinary examination of parallels between the early modern era and the world in which we live today. Readers are invited to look to the past to see how then, as now, people turned to storytelling to integrate and adapt to rapid social change, to reinforce or restructure community, to sell new ideas, and to refashion the past. This collection explores different modalities of storytelling in sixteenth-century France and emphasizes shared techniques and themes rather than attempting to define narrow kinds of narrative categories. Through studies of storytelling in tapestries, stone, and music as well as distinct genres of historical, professional, and literary writing (addressing both erudite and more common readers), the contributors to this collection evoke a society in transition, wherein traditional techniques and materials were manipulated to express new realities. 

Published by the University of Delaware Press. Distributed worldwide by Rutgers University Press. 
This collection explores different modalities of storytelling in sixteenth-century France and emphasizes shared techniques and themes rather than attempting to define narrow kinds of narratives categories. Through studies of storytelling in tapestries, stone, and music as well as in historical, professional, and literary writing that addressed both erudite and common readers, the contributors evoke a society in transition.EMILY E. THOMPSON is a professor of French and international studies in the Department of Global Languages, Cultures and Societies at Webster University in Webster Groves, Missouri. She contributed an article on Pierre Boaistuau’s edition ofHistoires des Amans fortunezto the forthcoming collection Pierre Boaistuau ou le génie des forms and co-translated and co-edited Jeanne d’Albret’sAmple declarationwith Kathleen Llewellyn ló1