FROM ACADEMIC TO POPULAR WRITINGS: THE CIRCULATION OF A PARTICULAR PICTURE OF URBAN LIFE: THE « CONGESTION OF THE PARIS STREETS » IN THE 17TH CENTURY The theme of the congestion of the Paris streets constitutes a stereotyped representation of urban life to be found in all sorts of documents, ranging from scholarly writings to chap books. In this article, we will look at a set of texts from the: 17th century. We intend to try and determine the conditions of the circulation of this theme, and the characteristics of this picture of urban life in the " bibliothèque bleue ". We will base our study on the analysis of some of the semantic networks around the notion of " congestion ". The lexical analysis shows that these texts were fairly similar when they were produced. But in a literary atmosphere in which classicism is of overall importance, any text which does not conform to the linguistic norm or which is not written by a recognized " author " is liable to be disparaged. On the other hand, one could say that the " livrets bleus " found a wider audience than schorlarly writings and offer pictures of urban life which can be interpreted at many levels of understanding.