Charles Sorel, sieur de Souvigny facts for kids
Charles Sorel, sieur de Souvigny (born around 1602 – died March 7, 1674) was a French writer. He wrote many different kinds of books, but he is best known for his novels.
About Charles Sorel's Life
We don't know much about Charles Sorel's early life. We do know that by 1635, he was the official historian for France. This meant he wrote about the country's history.
Sorel wrote about many subjects, like science, history, and religion. But people mostly remember him for his stories. He wanted to change what people liked to read. At the time, many popular stories were "pastoral romances." These were long, fancy tales about shepherds and shepherdesses falling in love in a perfect countryside.
Sorel tried to make fun of these stories with his own adventure novel, Histoire comique de Francion. The first version came out in 1623. It was about the funny adventures of a character named Francion. Many people read it, but they still loved the older, fancy stories.
To make his point even clearer, Sorel wrote another book called Le Berger extravagant (which means The Extravagant Shepherd). In this story, a shop-boy from Paris reads too many romantic books. He decides to become a shepherd with a dozen sheep by the Seine River. He even chooses a rather plain girl to be his romantic partner! Sorel wanted to show how silly the old romantic stories could be. He didn't quite create a new type of novel, but he certainly made a strong statement against the overly dramatic "heroic romances" of his time.
Among his other important works were Polyandre (1648) and La Connaissance des bons livres (1671). Charles Sorel passed away in Paris on March 7, 1674.
Some of Charles Sorel's Books
Charles Sorel wrote many books during his lifetime. Here are a few of his original works:
- Histoire amoureuse de Cléagénor et de Doristée (1621) - An early love story.
- Nouvelles françaises (1623) - A collection of French short stories.
- L'Histoire comique de Francion (1623) - His famous funny adventure novel. It was later expanded and renamed La vraie histoire comique de Francion in 1633.
- Le Berger extravagant (1627-1628) - The story that made fun of romantic shepherd tales. It was also called Anti-Roman later.
- Histoire de la monarchie française (1629) - A history of the French monarchy.
- La science des choses corporelles (1634) - This was the first part of his big work called La Science Universelle, which explored different types of knowledge.
- Polyandre, Histoire Comique (1648) - Another one of his comic histories.
- Description de l'Isle de portraiture et de la ville des portraits (1659) - A descriptive work.
- De la connoissance des bons livres, ou Examen de plusieurs autheurs (1671) - This book discussed and reviewed many authors and good books.
Images for kids
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Charles Sorel's book Polyandre (1648)
See also
In Spanish: Charles Sorel para niños
