Abstract: The frequently-commentated attack against the “Textor” and the “Parnasse” in the Histoire comique de Francion seems to make of Sorel an early witness to the deterioration in the academic use of poetic dictionaries. Condemning the use of an artificial language cut off from living prose – a language which was moreover only valorised by dictionaries, the guardians of archaism and convention – Sorel developed a singular reflection on poetic practice.
