Knowra Paul Scarron Paul Scarron Paul Scarron (1610–1660) was a French poet and playwright whose burlesque verse and unfinished novel Le Roman comique made him a leading comic writer of his century.
Burlesque : A comic style that treats elevated subjects in low or incongruous language, or elevates trivial subjects through grand language. Scarron’s poems and plays helped establish burlesque as a prominent French literary mode.
Le Roman comique : Paul Scarron’s unfinished comic novel, published in two parts in 1651 and 1657, follows a troupe of traveling actors. This is Scarron’s best-known work and the clearest example of his narrative comedy.
Françoise d’Aubigné, Madame de Maintenon : Françoise d’Aubigné was Paul Scarron’s wife and later became the second wife of Louis XIV. Her marriage to Scarron linked his household to a figure who later became influential at court.
French literature of the seventeenth century : French writing produced during the seventeenth century, spanning baroque experimentation and the rise of classicism. Scarron’s career belongs to the period’s shift between exuberant literary modes and classical norms.
Mock-heroic : A comic mode that imitates the elevated style of epic to treat trivial or ridiculous subjects. Scarron’s Virgil parody is a major French example of this reversal of epic scale.
Commedia dell’arte : An Italian theatrical tradition built around masked character types, improvised performance, and recurring comic scenarios. Its stock characters and physical comedy helped shape the theatrical world Scarron depicts.
Jodelet ou le Maître valet : A comedy by Paul Scarron, first performed in 1645, built around mistaken identity and the comic actor Jodelet. The play shows Scarron adapting theatrical role reversal to the French stage.
Théophile de Viau : Théophile de Viau was a French poet whose work helped shape early seventeenth-century libertine and baroque poetry. His irreverent poetic tradition forms part of the literary background to Scarron’s burlesque.
French Fronde : A series of civil wars and political revolts in France from 1648 to 1653 against royal authority. The instability of the Fronde forms part of the historical backdrop to Scarron’s mature career.
Picaresque novel : A prose narrative following a resourceful, low-status protagonist through loosely connected episodes of social life. The traveling actors and episodic encounters in Le Roman comique recall picaresque storytelling.
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