Charles Sorel, sieur de Souvigny (c. 1597 - March 8, 1674), French novelist and miscellaneous writer, was born in Paris about 1597. Events January 24 - Battle of Turnhout. ... March 8 is the 67th day of the year in the Gregorian Calendar (68th in Leap years). ... Events February 19 - England and the Netherlands sign the Treaty of Westminster. ... The Eiffel Tower has become a symbol of Paris throughout the world. ...

Very little is known of his life except that in 1635 he was historiographer of France. He wrote on science, history and religion, but is only remembered by his novels. He tried to destroy the vogue of the pastoral romance by writing a novel of adventure, the Histoire comique de Francion (1622). The episodical adventures of Francion found many readers, who nevertheless reserved their admiration for the Astrée it was intended to ridicule. Historiography is writing about rather than of history. ...

Sorel decided to make his intention unmistakable, and in Le Berger extravagant (3 vols, 1627) he wrote a burlesque, in which a Parisian shop-boy, his head turned by sentiment, chooses an unprepossessing mistress and starts life as a shepherd with a dozen sheep on the banks of the Seine. Sorel did not succeed in founding the novel of character, and what he accomplished was more in the direction of farce, but he struck a shrewd blow at romance. Burlesque was originally a form of art that mocked by imitation, referring to everything from comic sketches to dance routines and usually lampooning the social attitudes of upper classes. ... Heroic romances, the name by which is distinguished a class of imaginative literature which flourished in the 17th century, principally in France. ...

Among his other works are Polyandre (1648) and La Connaissance des bons livres (1673). He died in Paris on the 8th of March 1674.

This article incorporates text from the public domain 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica. The public domain comprises the body of all creative works and other knowledge—writing, artwork, music, science, inventions, and others—in which no person or organization has any proprietary interest. ... The Eleventh Edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica (1911) in many ways represents the sum of knowledge at the beginning of the 20th century. ...