C.D. Warner, et al., comp.
The Library of the World’s Best Literature. An Anthology in Thirty Volumes. 1917.
Paul Scarron (1610–1660)
Scarron, Paul (skär-rô
‘). A French poet, dramatist, and novelist; born at Paris about 1610; died there, Oct. 14, 1660. At the age of thirty, in consequence of a rheumatic attack, in which he was treated by a quack doctor, he became an invalid for life,—deformed and contorted, and suffering continual pain. His best work is the ‘Comic Romance’ (2 vols., 1651–57, but never completed), the story of a band of strolling actors. In this novel Scarron draws on Spanish sources, as he does also in the comedies ‘The Ridiculous Heir’; ‘Jodelet’; ‘Don Japhet of Armenia’; ‘The Scholar of Salamanca.’ His travesty of the Æneid (1648–53) was in its day regarded as a masterpiece of genuine burlesque humor; but it is now rated as unworthy of the author’s great talent. He married in 1652 Françoise d’Aubigné, who afterward, as Mme de Maintenon, became the wife of Louis XIV.