SOURCE: "Innocence and Impotence: The Scenario of Initiation in L'Ecumoire and in the Literary Fairy Tale," in Eighteenth Century Life, Vol. VII, October, 1981, pp. 71–85.

In the essay below, Vessely focuses on the sexuality of Tanzaï in Crébillon's French literary fairy tale L'Ecumoire.

The overriding literary project of Crébillon fils was to explore "The Ways of Love," and particularly, according to Clifton Cherpack [in his An Essay on Crébillon 'fils', 1962], the ways in which love shapes the social relations between the sexes. Crébillon's premise, best illustrated by Versac's famous "Traité de morale" in Les Egarements du coeur et de l'esprit, is that the study of social dynamics constitutes a science which can be learned and then manipulated to one's personal advantage. Crébillon was concerned with the here and now, with the trajectories of social fortunes in the upper reaches of...