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The Reformation · 1531
The Mirror of the Sinful Soul
Le Miroir de l'âme pécheresse
Marguerite de Navarre · 1492–1549
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What it is
A long devotional poem on the soul's nothingness and God's mercy, in which the speaker is by turns God's daughter, mother, sister, and wife.
Why it lasted
Condemned by the Sorbonne and protected by its author's brother the king; the eleven-year-old Elizabeth Tudor translated it as a new year's gift.
Where to read it
Public domain and free to read in full, though not held here. The archives below have it.
These open a search on each archive rather than a direct link, which is the honest way to point at an edition nobody here has checked line by line.
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