Synthèse
Alector ou le coq, a novel written by Barthélemy 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.
