Charles Sorel, sieur de Souvigny

Charles Sorel, Seigneur de Souvigny (* around 1602 in Paris, † March 7, 1674 ibid ) was a French writer and historian.

Born and raised in a Parisian family of lawyers, Sorel entered as a very young man in 1623 with great success the literary stage with La vraie histoire comique de Francion, the first French Pfcaro novel by Spanish models (eg the Lazarillo de Tormes of 1554 ).

The Francion tells the story of a young nobleman province of that name, the first has a love affair with a married woman, but then later on an ideal lover tried that has disappeared to Italy and he finally gets. Inserted into this told in the third person main plot, which was initially applied and in Paris, then plays in and around Rome, longer slots in which different narrators and narrators, including the protagonist Francion itself, in the I - form in retrospect from their more report or less eventful life. Here are Sorel in a very realistic manner for the time insight into the living conditions of almost all layers of the then French society, which are presented in the context of exciting action sequences, not without wit and satire. The Francion was the entire 17th century through constantly reprinted and widely imitated. ( The German translation truthful and funny history of the life of Francion appeared in Frankfurt in 1662. )

1627/28 published Sorel another, only passable successful novel, Le Berger extravagant (Eng. The Crazy Shepherd ). It is the quasi told with educational intentions tale of a young Parisian bourgeois who tries to live with the novelistic names lysis after too extensive reading novels under the ridicule of his friends as a shepherd, but is finally cured of his folly. In this part, plenty of doctrinal "anti- novel" (the title of the revised version of 1633 /34) mocked Sorel triggered by Honoré d' Urfés pastoral romance L' Astrée fashion the shepherd poems, Shepherd pieces, pastoral romances and the pastoral board games of all kinds

In 1635 he bought from an uncle the office of Historiographe de France, which was indeed endowed only moderately, but a near- sinecure represented that allowed a literary, to some extent independently of patrons and writers of favor with the public. This did Sorel diligently for many years, where he along with two other novels mainly serious " livres d' histoire, de morale et politique " wrote (eg, a Histoire de Louis XIII, 1646 ). However, he was unable to repeat the great success of Francion and the least passable of Berger, who influenced the development of French literature and ensure its author until today a certain notoriety.

Of interest Sorel is also available as a historian of the literature of his time with La Bibliothèque française ( 1664) and De la connaissance of bons livres ( 1671), where he was the first in France, who attempted a critical exposition of contemporary literature.