4

Antoine Baudeau de Somaize was linked historically to Molière and exemplifies the new generation of authors in the 1660s. He has raised numerous questions among literary historians, beginning in the nineteenth century. The rare, scattered sources on Somaize have produced a number of different hypotheses—among them, that the name was a pseudonym used by other authors (Sorel, Donneau de Visé). This article has two distinct goals. First, it brings together existing information about Somaize and presents a recent discovery, providing a synthesis of the question in the hope of spurring new research on the topic. Second, it describes Somaize’s career, with a particular focus on its interest for historians of literature, revealing the editorial, social, and commercial contexts in which this fashionable literature of the 1660s was produced.