From Professor’s Son to ‘François Beroalde, escuyer, sieur de Verville, docteur en medicine’
François Béroalde de Verville used self-representation, including in print, more extensively than his father, Matthieu Beroald, in order to carve out his own social status. Literature and learning were for François the passport to social ascent, one of the media in which it was achieved, and a sign that it had been achieved. But his is a less clear-cut story of social ascent than his father’s. It is in this insecurity, and in the fragility of the social effects of François’s own intellectual inheritance from his father, that the very dynamism of François’s representations of social status lies. The chapter first considers what Matthieu bequeathed to his son François, formally and informally. It then considers how François constructed his own social status. What role, if any, did family, learning, and literature play in that constructing? And how did the latter affect his communicating to readers through texts?