Livre des Manières
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Livre des Manières (c. 1170, English: Book of Manners) is the best known book by Étienne de Fougères.
It is a long poem in Middle French verse of 1,345 lines in stanzas of four octosyllabic mono-rhymed lines. It is an oddity in terms of genre. It is a series of moralistic sketches addressed to generic figures: from popes, archbishops and kings to merchants, peasants and women, detailing what was unacceptable conduct in each and what each should ideally aspire to. It is possible that the Livre was in origin a series of French summaries of Latin sermons Stephen had preached or prepared, composed in the vernacular for wider circulation, the sort of sermon called 'Ad Status', addressed to different conditions of people. An older interpretation of it is as an early example of an 'estates satire', though it lacks the bitterness and negativity that goes with the genre. It is variously dated by commentators to different periods in his career. However it has been noted that in the colophon to the poem in which the author identifies himself and asks for readers' prayers, it is as 'Master Stephen de Fougères', which is not a title he would have used as a bishop. Similarly the dedication of the work to the widowed Cecilia, countess of Hereford, indicates the period when Stephen was a royal clerk resident in England, before 1163. Its apparent quotation of the Policraticus of Stephen's fellow courtier, John of Salisbury, would date it to after 1159. The work has attracted attention for several reasons. Historians of feudal society see it as a text associated with The Three Orders theory of medieval society. More recently its deep misogyny and Stephen's highly coloured evocation of lesbian intercourse has interested historians of gender and sexuality.
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