Charles Sorel as a Precursor of Realism

Abstract

Although Charles Sorel was the author of two of the most popular French novels in the seventeenth century, plus a number of other novels, and many scholarly works, including a history of literature, essays on morality and history, and an encyclopedia of science of philosophy, he is rarely heard of today. Born in 1602, in a bourgeois quarter of Paris, Sorel, according to his own statement, wrote his first books when he was only seventeen, and before he was twenty-four years old had written over a dozen works, most of them novels. His family income cut off at an early age as a result of his having abandoned the study of law for literature, Sorel found writing practically his only means of earning a living. In 1635, having shown an early predilection for history, he was able to secure the post of royal historiographer, left vacant by the death of his uncle, Charles Bernard. For several years he mingled with the most important political, social, and literary personages of his time, taking part in the “Querelle du Cid,” making fun of the French Academy at its inception, and attacking Mazarin in a series of comic gazettes and “mazarinades” in Parisian patois. However, as a result of his supreme egoism and his inevitable gift for making influential enemies, he was soon forced from this post and from the “grand monde” which he thereafter never ceased to criticize. Disdaining rich patrons, Sorel withdrew into private bourgeois life, living many years at the home of his sister and her husband, the assistant “procureur général,” Parmentier. Leaving his desk only to secure precise first-hand documentation for his diversified works, he spent the greater part of his time during nearly fifty years writing copiously on nearly every conceivable subject.