Words of Carnal Love in the Lyrics of Georges Brassens' Songs

How does Brassens, one of the greatest French singers of all time and one of the most important French poets of the 20th Century speak about sexuality? The choice of the topic of this paper can be explained on the one hand by the reputation of Brassens as an author who was not afraid to call a spade a spade and recorded scandalous songs such as "Le gorille", "Le mauvais sujet repenti" or "P... de toi", and on the other, by the stylistic variability of his vocabulary that seems to range from vernacular and slang to formal style. The qualitative analysis described in this paper has confirmed the hypothesis of great stylistic variability among words of carnal love that can be found in the texts of Georges Brassens. However, slang and dirty words are seldom used by this modest libertine who often speaks of sexuality but who is hardly ever explicit.