Literature and court society in 16th-century France:

a reading of the novel A Queen Margot (1845), by Alexandre Dumas

Abstract

Literature and, consequently, the historical novel genre have become widely used sources in research on the past, resulting in studies with a broad and enriched understanding of historical periods. The night of Saint Bartholomew, which took place in France during the beginning of the 16th century, was portrayed in the novel A Rainha Margot (1845), by Alexandre Dumas, with translation and adaptation for Portuguese in 2001 by Fernando Nuno. The objective of the research is to understand the relationship between history and fiction, building a bridge between a specific historiography that deals with the reformist religious movement and the aforementioned book by Dumas, written in the 19th century. In these terms, we hope to contribute to studies on the use of the historical novel as a source to better understand the relationship between religious wars and the formation of modernity.