Conclusions

The Brouart–Vatable–Beroald–Verville family’s story is not one of smooth upward social ascent from artisanal origins. Both Matthieu and François, like numerous contemporaries, sought social status not only by producing learned and literary discourse but by writing themselves publicly into it. However, in François’s case the reliance of those representations on finding audience approbation in order to be socially effective made them fragile guarantors of status in comparison with the lower but more solid institutional kind that his father enjoyed and that François professed to despise. Also, as with the Marots, the men’s ascent through literature and learning did not pull the women up to the same extent. This case also illustrates that social hierarchy, experienced through the lens of family, was a complex imbrication of different factors, such as learning, literature, institutions, the book trade, vestigial family habits, self-fashioning, personality, and sheer accident or contingency.