Parodie

1701 · 2506 — "A Gringuenaude i.e. Paris: chez Vincent d'Avalos & Fleurimont Mordant rue du Gros Visage a l'Enseigne du Privé Conseil attenant l'Hôtellerie de la Fleur" 1701. 12mo 129 x 76 mm. viii 64 pp. Half-title. Expressive woodcut vignette on title a chamber pot and its contents. Occasional very light spotting else fine. 19th-century citron morocco sides gilt panelled spine gilt lettered longitudinally turn-ins gilt gilt edges pair of vellum flyleaves by Koehler with his signature on verso of front free endpaper. First Edition of a silly scatological spoof. Farts excrement latrines and their Rabelaisian synonyms provide characters' and place names and an endless supply of windy jokes in this ultimately tragic love tale. The hero Prince Croqu'Etron Sht-eater son of the sneaky Roi de Vesse Silent-But-Deadly-Fart falls in love with the lovely Princess Foirette Diarrhea daughter of his father's enemy the open-hearted Roi Petaut Loud Fart. Abetted by King Vesse's minister Constipati whose secret liaison with one of Foirette's governesses Lady Clisterine Enema makes him take the Prince's side Croqu'Etron persuades his father to replace war with dynastic marriage a gentler path to territorial aggrandizement. Love vanquishes all King Petaud gives Prince Croqu'Etron a handsome commode chair and the Kingdom of Caca finds peace but the newly married lovers meet their demise at the hands of the evil Prince Gadouard Manure who drowns them in vats of perfume and is punished by the king with the opposite fate being buried alive in you know what. This clever extended dirty joke complete with satirical preface and facetious printing permission dated from Laval 1 Sept. 1701 and a final selection of verses sung at the royal marriage at some point became associated with the fairy tale author Mlle. de Lubert ca. 1702-ca. 1779 whose style it appears to parody. Either through a misunderstanding or as a joke the book was even sometimes attributed to her notwithstanding both its contents and the date of the permission d'imprimer. This is the only 18th-century edition but the book's publishing history was garbled by Gay who describes two 18th-century editions dating the supposed first ca. 1701 based on the facetious permission and a second edition from ca. 1790; according to Gay only the second edition contains the section titled Contes et devis. which appear in this edition on pp. 56-64. Confused library cataloguers have thus dated this edition to ca. 1790. Its typography however points to an earlier date. Stanford University holds a manuscript of the text from the Phillipps collection with textual variants dated 1716. Reprints appeared in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. OCLC lists 4 copies in N. American libraries. Jannet Bibliotheca scatologica 1850 28; Gay-Lemonnyer II:581-2; Barbier II:833; Quérard La France Littéraire V: 382; Cioranescu 18. s. 40961. Cf. note in the Bulletin du bibliophile et du bibliothécaire vol. 14 p. 645; D. Haase ed. Greenwood Encyclopedia of Folktales and Fairy Tales 2008 I:590-91. chez Vincent d'Avalos & Fleurimont Mordant, rue du Gros Visage, a l'Enseigne du Privé Conseil, attenant l' hardcover books