Works
Scarron was very prolific as an author. The piece most famous in his own day was his Virgile travesti (1648-1653), a parody of the Aeneid, but the reputation of this work later declined. According to the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition, the Virgile travesti "is now thought a somewhat ignoble waste of singular powers for burlesque" and the Roman comique (1651-1657) is Scarron's best work: "This history of a troupe of strolling actors... is almost the first French novel...which shows real power of painting manners and character, and is singularly vivid. It is in the style of the Spanish picaresque romance, and furnished Théophile Gautier with the idea and with some of the details of his Capitaine Fracasse."
Scarron also wrote some shorter novellas, including La Precaution inutile, which inspired Sedaine's Gageure imprévue; Les Hypocrites and may also have inspired Molière's Tartuffe. His plays include Jodelet (1645), Don Japhel d'Arménie (1653), L'Écolier de Salamanque (1654), Le Marquis ridicule ou la comtesse faite à la hâte (1655), La Fausse Apparence (1657), Le Prince corsaire (1658).
Most of his works were adapted from Spanish sources, particularly Tirso de Molina and Francisco de Rojas Zorrilla.
Scarron is a character in the D'Artagnan romance Twenty Years After by Alexandre Dumas.
Read more about this topic: Paul Scarron
Famous quotes containing the word works:
“It is the art of mankind to polish the world, and every one who works is scrubbing in some part.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“My plan of instruction is extremely simple and limited. They learn, on week-days, such coarse works as may fit them for servants. I allow of no writing for the poor. My object is not to make fanatics, but to train up the lower classes in habits of industry and piety.”
—Hannah More (1745–1833)
“Most works of art, like most wines, ought to be consumed in the district of their fabrication.”
—Rebecca West (1892–1983)