« LAISSE LE PLOURER AUX MOLZ HOMMES EFFEMINEZ »: Échec de la virilité et mollesse romanesque dans Alector ou le coq de Barthélemy Aneau1. Failure of Masculinity and mollesse romanesque in Barthélemy Aneau’s Alector ou le coq

Abstract

Alector ou le coq , a novel written by Barthelemy Aneau and published in 1560, tells the story of two characters, Franc-Gal and his son Alector, who present typical characteristics of herculean masculinity. The author develops an epic, heroic, chivalrous universe, showing a concern for a masculine identity that should be built under the sign of the father. At the same time, the novel thematizes, at a metapoetic level, the need for a vigorous and rigorous narrative form. These elements, however, are subject to an estrangement and negation process in which a dialectics of virility and non-virility, rigour and irregularity is crucial. Character and text go through a misplacement process; some elements of diffraction establish themselves at the heart of a universe exhibited as heroic and vigorous, coherent and rigorous. The author seems to conceive a discursive strategy able to legitimize a man/father model and a writing that distance themselves from the canonical models in terms of masculinity and poetics.