CHARLES SOREL ET LE PARADOXE DU TRAITEMENT DES MALADIES DE L’ÂME PAR LA FACÉTIE
CHARLES SOREL AND THE PARADOX OF TREATMENT OF DISEASES OF THE SOUL THROUGH FACETY

Summary/Abstract: In the first part of his career (1623-1634) Sorel paradoxically illustrates the therapeutic potential of facetiousness. If playful tricks and words target the deviant characters of his two comic novels (Histoire comique de Francion and Le Berger extravagant), it is certainly to cure them of their errors and illusions. It also has a social aim since the correction of individuals is necessary for the remediation of society. Sorel takes this issue seriously enough to abandon fictional and comic writing in favor of an encyclopedic project of collecting and disseminating knowledge that he calls Universal Science. It is through access to knowledge and the exercise of reason that his readers are invited to contribute to the improvement of society and, ultimately, of humanity. But the conviction of the physiological basis of operations of the mind and dispositions of the soul leads the facetious writer, Sorel, to draw on the resources of derision and mockery to provoke his readers and to draw them out of their moral and intellectual apathy. A continuity appears in the transition from the comic to the serious genre, thus revealing the anthropological foundation of therapeutic laughter.

• Details
• Contents