[ANONYME. Attribué à A.C. de Caylus, à T.S. Gueulette ou à F. J. de P. Bernis] - Nocrion - Conte Allobroge [sans réserve] - 1747

Most sought-after opera for its content and rarity among collectors of unique and ancient texts.

Nocrion, Count Allobroge

19e binding - in leather - unique piece.

Chagrin Rouge decorated with punched-in gold inlays on the covers and the title of the work.

38 pages with a precious engraving on the title page and 5 sheets with another six plates containing the written presentation with signature and date, complete and original work.

Measurements: (15.8 x 9.7 cm)

Around the mid-1740s, Caylus held weekly writing workshops, where participants agreed on the level and linguistic style to be used, so the text could have been written collectively.

Scientific research involves collecting and comparing similar data in order to develop general hypotheses. Caylus's Mémoire on the fabliaux of 1746 (not published until 1753) predates Nocrion by a short margin. The fictitious introductory letter to Nocrion is dated December 1746, with the publication date of 1747 on the frontispiece.

The historical and poetic narration begins with Count Allobroge on horseback, accompanied by his squire, who arrived near a watercourse. During the stop, the squire found some women's garments and took possession of them to hide. Later, he encounters three women who, in the historical narration, are thought to be three forest fairies. The three young women, in fact, willing to retrieve their clothes, grant the Count a 'Magical' ability, from which point the story continues with the progression of the presented opera.

In 1746, Caylus anonymously published a translation of another fabliau focused on the divulgation of sexual secrets, Le Mantel mal taille (or Court-Mantel), in his thematic collection, Les Manteaux. In this fabliau, a magic cloak 'badly cut' dresses unfaithful women who are too short or too long, causing chaos at King Arthur's court.

Remember how Madame de Graffigny (1695–1753) was struck by the discovery that she had used a medieval manuscript as one of her sources. The Coats is a collection of eleven stories and a song on the theme of the cloak that traverse history, literature, and languages of the world; only one of them is an obscene fabliau. The second part, '2e parte, which we can do without reading,' provides academic notes that are sometimes serious and sometimes ridiculous. The joke lies in the banality of the cloak as an object of erudition, perhaps echoing object narratives that give voice to a pin or a coin, although in Les Manteaux the cloak prompts speech in others, while remaining strictly non-verbal.

The tension between the antiquarian writer's caution and his no less learned openness to ancient texts reveals the power play within censorship. Nocrion offers a proto-academic version (rather than pseudo of the fabliau), treating it as a text received with trepidation and linguistic dexterity. The story's theme is secret language and women's bodily experiences, but its readers are fluent in ancient and foreign languages.

However, at the same time, there is a sense of anxiety about categorizing and naming the interests described as living and of study. Some, even if animated, seem destined to remain invisible and to escape classification, even with the use of the darkest language. These 'secrets' are not necessarily mute. Gaining a voice, in turn, makes them potentially subjects of knowledge. It is significant that Nocrion is a text that seeks to give a new voice to language and texts from the distant past, through an interest in female voices that is largely typical of that time. The Middle Ages is engaged in the task of naming the expanding world of Enlightenment knowledge, just as the Old French fabliau, reformulated as a libertine work or as a subject of study, found a new audience and a new language, as exemplified brilliantly.

The photographic images are a demonstration of the excellent condition of this very rare collectible item, for your kind attention.