Charles Sorel

See also: Sorel

Charles Sorel , sior of Souvigny, born in 1599 and dead the March 8th 1674), is a novelist and writer libertine French of the age baroque.

It is far from known of its time, even if he is historiographer of the king as of 1635. He writes on science, the history and the religion, but only its novels passed to the posterity. It tries to put at bottom the pastoral Roman, very popular at the time, by writing the first picaresque Roman French, the true comic history of Francion (1622). However, even if the picaresques adventures of Francion touch many people, this one continues to admire Astrée Honore d' Urfé, whose Francion is a parody.

For the extravagant Shepherd (3 volumes, 1627), Sorel wants to still make his criticism clearer: it is about a novel Burlesque, where the son of a Parisian merchant, the spirit disturbed by the excessive reading of sheep-folds inspired by Astrée , chooses a not very pleasing mistress, and becomes Pasteur of a dozen sheep on the edges of the Seine. Even if it is lower than Francion or the Quichotte, this comic Roman is an effective satire, near to the joke, heroic Roman, the whole not stripped of some Réalisme well advances some over its time.

Works

True comic History of Francion (1622)
the extravagant Shepherd (3 volumes, 1627)
Loix of Galanterie (1644). Republication: Aubry, Paris, 1855. Text in Polyandrous line and
(1648)
the Knowledge of the good books (1673)

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