Handbook of Good Manners for Little Girls | Pierre Louÿs
The notorious DUNCE BOOKS brings an English translation of the scandalous Manuel de civilité pour les petites filles à l'usage des maisons d'éducation. An infamous erotic literary work by the French writer Pierre Louÿs, written in 1917 and published posthumously and anonymously in 1927.
It takes the form of a parody of the rigorous educational handbooks of the time, and is thus composed of short pieces of advice (generally a sentence or two) arranged into topics: "At home", "Duties towards your mother", "In class", etc. The tone of the work is sharp, even concise, the style particularly believable and chatty. Pierre Louÿs uses irony readily to evoke the cheap loves of the perverse young girls, and this relative distance enables him to despise any moral censure. 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, the "Glossary" which opens the work comprises this warning:
We have considered it useless to explain the words: cunt, slit, fanny, mound, cock, tail, bollock, testicle, cum (verb), cum (noun), erection, masturbate, suck, lick, pump, kiss, fellate, screw, fuck, ass-fuck, ejaculate, dildo, lesbian, dyke, sixty-nine, cunnilingus, cute, whore, brothel. These words are familiar to all little girls.
It takes the form of a parody of the rigorous educational handbooks of the time, and is thus composed of short pieces of advice (generally a sentence or two) arranged into topics: "At home", "Duties towards your mother", "In class", etc. The tone of the work is sharp, even concise, the style particularly believable and chatty. Pierre Louÿs uses irony readily to evoke the cheap loves of the perverse young girls, and this relative distance enables him to despise any moral censure. 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, the "Glossary" which opens the work comprises this warning:
We have considered it useless to explain the words: cunt, slit, fanny, mound, cock, tail, bollock, testicle, cum (verb), cum (noun), erection, masturbate, suck, lick, pump, kiss, fellate, screw, fuck, ass-fuck, ejaculate, dildo, lesbian, dyke, sixty-nine, cunnilingus, cute, whore, brothel. These words are familiar to all little girls.
