Michel Tournier, Le Coq de bruyère [The Fetishist and Other Stories]

Laurence M. Porter (Michigan State University)

Ed. by David Houston Jones, University of Exeter
The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 1.5.2.07: French Writing and Culture: Postwar and Contemporary, 1945-present.
Vol. editors: Kate Averis (University of Western Australia), Hugo Azerad (University of Cambridge), Patrick ffrench (King's College London), Edward Forman (University of Bristol), Akane Kawakami (Birkbeck, University of London), Siobhán McIlvanney (King's College London), Sinan Richards (King's College London), Tim Unwin (University of Bristol), David Williams (University of Sheffield)

Dates

First circulation or publication 1978

Places

France (Country of Origin)

Genres and Modes

Story Collection

Resources

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In the tradition of André Gide and Jean Genet, Michel Tournier aims to subvert conventional notions of gender and of acceptable sexual behaviour, in order to return us to a lost paradise of polymorphous perversity. The fourteen stories in

Le Coq de Bruyère

recreate the Platonic myth of the androgyne in order to call into question the normative social values of heterosexuality, marriage, and procreation.The gentle giant Logre (a pun on L’Ogre, the ogre) in “La Fugue du petit Poucet”, a generative figure, is hermaphroditic, like both Jehovah and Adam at the beginning of “La Famille Adam”. As a writer, however, Tournier adopts a tight formal logic of theme and variations inspired by Bach’s

Art of the Fugue

, which he considers an unsurpassable masterpiece (see

Le Vent paraclet

,…

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1171 words

Citation: Porter, Laurence M.. "Le Coq de bruyère". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 26 January 2011 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=31715, accessed 23 April 2024.]

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