The French novelist and playwright Alain René Lesage (1668-1747) created a vision of his transitional epoch as rich in good humor as in moral failings.

Born in Brittany, Alain René Lesage went to Paris to study and practice law, soon abandoning this first career for a literary vocation which made him entirely dependent on his pen, with the distinction of being perhaps the first French writer to support himself and his family solely by the pursuit of letters. The early years of his career were given over to hackwork and translations from Spanish theater and romance. Lesage was in fact approaching middle age when, in 1707, he experienced his first personal successes with the comedy Crispin rival de son maître and a novel, Le Diable boiteux, inspired by Antonio de Guevara's Diablo conjuelo.

Lesage pushed his satirical bent to the limits of audacity in 1709 in...