Abstract: Charles Coypeau d’Assoucy gives a more essential dimension to the topic of poverty than the authors of the comic stories who preceded him (like Sorel) did, developing a veritable, and paradoxical, elegy of poverty in the dialogue of La Prison which reveals its philosophical and satirical stakes. The posture of diogenic poverty assumed by the author transforms his testimony into a form of parrêsia – political “words of truth”.
