The Molière authorship question is a controversy started in 1919 when Pierre Louÿs, in two articles titled "Corneille est-il l'auteur d'Amphitryon ?" ("Is Corneille the author of Amphitryon?") and "Molière est un chef-d'œuvre de Corneille" ("Molière is a masterpiece by Corneille"), claimed that he had uncovered a literary hoax. According to him, Molière had not written his own plays and had had Pierre Corneille for a ghostwriter; or, more precisely, Molière was a proxy for Corneille, following a practice which Louÿs believed was common but which one in fact does not encounter in 17th Century literature except for pamphlets and some collections of scholarly jokes around the turn of the century.