Abstract: This work studies an extensive corpus of clefs published between the beginning of the reign of Louis XIV and the Revolution which were intended to identify historical figures hidden under the cloaks of fiction. It considers how literary scholarship might benefit from these largely forgotten and often denigrated accessories.
Keyword: xviie siècle, xviiie siècle, théorie et histoire de la critique littéraire, bibliographie matérielle, histoire de la lecture, histoire du registre satirique, linguistique de la glose, linguistique du nom propre
