In the sixteenth century, allegory was old, but allegorical drama was relatively new. This is both a hermeneutical and a stylistic phenomenon that has not yet led to re-consideration of Marguerite de Navarre’s “secular” plays. These works are generally considered atypical, in the sense that she uses outdated “medieval” dramatic forms in order to formulate new contents. But this is only partially true, as our study of the context of Le Mallade shows, because these forms were neither “old” nor “medieval.” Marguerite was engaged, in her own way, in the general adventure of theatrical allegory, and the separation of form and content is a critical fallacy. This article also argues that the combined form and content of Marguerite’s plays might have been determined by the situations in which they were represented.

Researchers should cite this work as follows:

• Koopmans, J., (2025), "L'allégorie théâtrale au début du XVIe siècle: le cas des pièces «profanes» de Marguerite de Navarre", HSSCommons: (DOI: )

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1. Renaissance and Reformation

Original publication: Koopmans, Jelle. "L'allégorie théâtrale au début du XVIe siècle: le cas des pièces «profanes» de Marguerite de Navarre." Renaissance and Reformation 38 (4): 2020. 65-89. DOI: 10.33137/rr.v38i4.8839. This material has been re-published in an unmodified form on the Canadian HSS Commons with the permission of Iter Canada / Renaissance and Reformation. Copyright © the author(s). Their work is distributed by Renaissance and Reformation under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License. For details, see https://creativecommons.org/licenses/.