Novel
The Comical History of Francion
Histoire comique de Francion
Charles Sorel · 1623
Opening lines
La nuit étoit déjà fort avancée, lorsqu'un certain vieillard, qui s'appeloit Valentin, sortit d'un château de Bourgogne avec une robe de chambre sur le dos, un bonnet rouge en tête et un gros paquet sous le bras.
The night was already far advanced when a certain old man, whose name was Valentin, came out of a castle in Burgundy with a dressing gown on his back, a red cap on his head and a large bundle under his arm.
Translation by Erostrate
Text quoted from archive.org
Synopsis
The novel opens with an attempted seduction: disguised as a charlatan, the young Francion tries to win the favours of Laurette, Valentin's wife, and the night spent at the château turns into a series of misunderstandings. The narrative then pauses to let the hero tell, himself, of his childhood, his years at school and his first steps in Paris. Then his desires change their object, and he turns to Naïs, a beauty whom he idealises.
Context
The book was published anonymously in 1623, in seven books. The enlarged edition of 1626 removes the obscenities and anything that might pass for heretical, and adds moral passages; that of 1633, in twelve books, titled La Vraie Histoire comique de Francion, bears the borrowed name of Nicolas de Moulinet, sieur du Parc. The original edition is known only from a single copy, on which Émile Roy based his reprint.
Who it is for
A long novel, in French of the beginning of the seventeenth century, coarse in places; it is most often read in the 1633 text.
Prizes and reception
An immediate and considerable success, it was one of the most widely read and most frequently reissued novels of its century.
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