Manuel De Civilité Pour Les Petites Filles à L'usage Des Maisons D'éducation

Pierre Louÿs

Publié par

Résumé

The Manuel de civilité pour les petites filles à l'usage des maisons d'éducation=Handbook of behaviour for little girls to be used in educational establishments is an erotic literary work by the French writer Pierre Louÿs, written in 1917 & published posthumously & anonymously in '27. It takes the form of a parody of the rigorous educational handbooks of the time, & is thus composed of short counsels assembled according to topics: "At the house", "Duties towards your mother", "In class" etc. The tone of the work is sharp, even concise, the style particularly believable & chatty. Louÿs uses irony readily to evoke the cheap loves of the perverse young girls. This relative distance enables him to despise any moral censure. In fact, one is far from the invaluable refinement of the Songs of Bilitis. The Handbook of civility is undoubtedly the most subversive work of Louÿs, a true attack against the middle-class puritanism of the Belle Époque. By the way of illustration, a Glossary which opens the work comprises this warning: "We have considered it useless to explain the words: cunt, slit, fanny, mound, fuck, tail, bollock, testicle, whip (verb), whip (noun), bondage, masturbate, suck, lick, pump, kiss, fellate, thread, fuck, ass-fuck, ejaculate, dildo, lesbian, pod, sixty-nine, pussy, cute, whore, brothel. These words are familiar to all little girls." The edition of the work published at Librio is marked "for informed readers". Some of the book’s counsels were illustrated by cartoonist Loïc Dubigeon under the title of Handbook of behavior for the use of big girls.