Charles Sorel
Charles Sorel , Seigneur de Souvigny (* around 1602 in Paris , † March 7, 1674 ibid) was a French writer and historian .
Born and raised in a family of lawyers in Paris, Sorel entered the literary stage with great success as a very young man in 1623 with La vraie histoire comique de Francion , the first French Picaro novel based on Spanish models (e.g. the Lazarillo de Tormes from 1554).
The Francion tells the story of a young provincial nobleman of this name who initially has a love affair with a married woman, but then tries to find an ideal lover again who has disappeared to Italy and who he finally gets. Inserted into this main plot, narrated in the third person, which takes place first in and in Paris, then in and near Rome, are longer insertions in which various narrators, including the protagonist Francion himself, look back from their more in first-person form or report less turbulent life. Here Sorel gives an insight into the living conditions of almost all strata of the then French in a way that was very realistic for the time. Society that are not presented without wit and satire in the context of exciting action sequences. The Francion was constantly reprinted and imitated in many ways throughout the 17th century. The German translation of the True and Funny History of the Life of Francion was published in Frankfurt in 1662.
1627/28 Sorel published another, only passably successful novel, Le Berger extravagant (Eng. "The crazy shepherd"). It is the story of a young Parisian bourgeoisie, told with pedagogical intentions, who, after reading a novel too extensively, tries to live as a shepherd with the fictional name of Lysis under the mockery of his friends, but is finally cured of his folly. In this "anti-novel" (which is the title of the revised version from 1633/34), which is sometimes richly instructive, Sorel mocks the fashion of shepherd poems, shepherd plays, shepherd novels and pastoral board games of all kinds triggered by Honoré d'Urfé 's shepherd novel L'Astrée .
In 1635 Sorel bought the post of Historiograph de France from an uncle , which was only moderately endowed, but represented an almost sinecure that allowed a literary figure to write somewhat independently of patrons and the favor of the public. Sorel did this with diligence for many years to come, in addition to two other novels he wrote mainly more serious "livres d'histoire, de morale et politique" (e.g. a Histoire de Louis XIII , 1646). However, this meant that he could no longer build on the great success of the Francion and the at least passable des Berger , which influenced the development of French literature and have ensured a certain fame for their author to this day.
Sorel is also of interest as a historian of literature of his time with La Bibliothèque française (1664) and De la connaissance des bons livres (1671), through which he was the first in France to attempt a critical presentation of contemporary literature.
Web links
- Literature by and about Charles Sorel in the catalog of the German National Library
- Works by and about Charles Sorel in the German Digital Library
- Article in "Names, titles and dates of French literature" (source)
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Sorel, Charles |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | French writer and historian |
| DATE OF BIRTH | around 1602 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Paris |
| DATE OF DEATH | March 7, 1674 |
| Place of death | Paris |