diff --git a/doc/api/next_api_changes/deprecations.rst b/doc/api/next_api_changes/deprecations.rst
index 0a7c9ce26182..2bc6b818839e 100644
--- a/doc/api/next_api_changes/deprecations.rst
+++ b/doc/api/next_api_changes/deprecations.rst
@@ -307,3 +307,7 @@ The *quality*, *optimize*, and *progressive* keyword arguments to
 
 Such options should now be directly passed to Pillow using
 ``savefig(..., pil_kwargs={"quality": ..., "optimize": ..., "progressive": ...})``.
+
+``dviread.Encoding``
+~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
+This class was (mostly) broken and is deprecated.
diff --git a/lib/matplotlib/backends/backend_pdf.py b/lib/matplotlib/backends/backend_pdf.py
index e2896b4eaa09..7e3b600196bf 100644
--- a/lib/matplotlib/backends/backend_pdf.py
+++ b/lib/matplotlib/backends/backend_pdf.py
@@ -763,12 +763,11 @@ def _embedTeXFont(self, fontinfo):
 
         # Encoding (if needed)
         if fontinfo.encodingfile is not None:
-            enc = dviread.Encoding(fontinfo.encodingfile)
-            differencesArray = [Name(ch) for ch in enc]
-            differencesArray = [0] + differencesArray
-            fontdict['Encoding'] = \
-                {'Type': Name('Encoding'),
-                 'Differences': differencesArray}
+            fontdict['Encoding'] = {
+                'Type': Name('Encoding'),
+                'Differences': [
+                    0, *map(Name, dviread._parse_enc(fontinfo.encodingfile))],
+            }
 
         # If no file is specified, stop short
         if fontinfo.fontfile is None:
diff --git a/lib/matplotlib/dviread.py b/lib/matplotlib/dviread.py
index bdb7ee576c13..ecdeb32ed837 100644
--- a/lib/matplotlib/dviread.py
+++ b/lib/matplotlib/dviread.py
@@ -919,6 +919,7 @@ def _parse(self, file):
                 encoding=encoding, filename=filename)
 
 
+@cbook.deprecated("3.3")
 class Encoding:
     r"""
     Parses a \*.enc file referenced from a psfonts.map style file.
@@ -988,8 +989,7 @@ def _parse_enc(path):
         The nth entry of the list is the PostScript glyph name of the nth
         glyph.
     """
-    with open(path, encoding="ascii") as file:
-        no_comments = "\n".join(line.split("%")[0].rstrip() for line in file)
+    no_comments = re.sub("%.*", "", Path(path).read_text(encoding="ascii"))
     array = re.search(r"(?s)\[(.*)\]", no_comments).group(1)
     lines = [line for line in array.split() if line]
     if all(line.startswith("/") for line in lines):