diff --git a/src/Renderers/CodeNodeRenderer.php b/src/Renderers/CodeNodeRenderer.php
index e554407d..fc54b415 100644
--- a/src/Renderers/CodeNodeRenderer.php
+++ b/src/Renderers/CodeNodeRenderer.php
@@ -62,7 +62,8 @@ public function render(): string
         $languages = array_unique([$language, $languageMapping]);
 
         if ('text' === $language) {
-            $highlightedCode = $code;
+            // Highlighter escapes correctly the code, we need to manually escape only for "text" code
+            $highlightedCode = $this->escapeForbiddenCharactersInsideCodeBlock($code);
         } else {
             $this->configureHighlighter();
 
@@ -117,23 +118,6 @@ public static function isLanguageSupported(string $lang): bool
         return \in_array($lang, $supportedLanguages, true);
     }
 
-    private function getLines(string $code): array
-    {
-        $lines = preg_split('/\r\n|\r|\n/', $code);
-        $reversedLines = array_reverse($lines);
-
-        // trim empty lines at the end of the code
-        foreach ($reversedLines as $key => $line) {
-            if ('' !== trim($line)) {
-                break;
-            }
-
-            unset($reversedLines[$key]);
-        }
-
-        return array_reverse($reversedLines);
-    }
-
     private function configureHighlighter()
     {
         if (false === self::$isHighlighterConfigured) {
@@ -143,4 +127,15 @@ private function configureHighlighter()
 
         self::$isHighlighterConfigured = true;
     }
+
+    /**
+     * Code blocks are displayed in "<pre>" tags, which has some reserved characters:
+     * https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTML/Element/pre
+     */
+    private function escapeForbiddenCharactersInsideCodeBlock(string $code): string
+    {
+        $codeEscaped = preg_replace('/&(?!amp;|lt;|gt;|quot;)/', '&amp;', $code);
+
+        return strtr($codeEscaped, ['<' => '&lt;', '>' => '&gt;', '"' => '&quot;']);
+    }
 }
diff --git a/tests/fixtures/expected/blocks/code-blocks/text.html b/tests/fixtures/expected/blocks/code-blocks/text.html
index a30c3ed7..fe77dea1 100644
--- a/tests/fixtures/expected/blocks/code-blocks/text.html
+++ b/tests/fixtures/expected/blocks/code-blocks/text.html
@@ -1,6 +1,6 @@
 <div translate="no" data-loc="1" class="notranslate codeblock codeblock-length-sm codeblock-text">
     <div class="codeblock-scroll">
         <pre class="codeblock-lines">1</pre>
-        <pre class="codeblock-code"><code>some text</code></pre>
+        <pre class="codeblock-code"><code>some text with special chars &lt; &gt; " &amp; and some text with special chars already escaped &lt; &gt; " &amp;</code></pre>
     </div>
 </div>
diff --git a/tests/fixtures/source/blocks/code-blocks/text.rst b/tests/fixtures/source/blocks/code-blocks/text.rst
index 823ef77d..50774bb1 100644
--- a/tests/fixtures/source/blocks/code-blocks/text.rst
+++ b/tests/fixtures/source/blocks/code-blocks/text.rst
@@ -1,3 +1,3 @@
 
 .. code-block:: text
-    some text
+    some text with special chars < > " & and some text with special chars already escaped &lt; &gt; &quot; &amp;